Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) serve many roles in the broader defense space- with mission sets like reconnaissance, remote delivery, and supporting other aircraft operations. In the future of UASs, ...human factors professionals serve a broad role in advocating for the users in the design process. This discussion panel will involve individuals with different experiences working with UAS technologies and its introduction to the end user. The panel will consist of the following topics: capturing user feedback, control station design for supervisory control, selection of operators as this technology grows, and broad issues in public policy. The panelists with a variety of civilian and military experience will highlight their day-to-day role as well as what they see as upcoming topics worth researching in this domain.
The control of a multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system is popular and attracting a lot of attentions. This is motivated by many practical civil and commercial UAV applications. Collision ...avoidance is the fundamental in motion planning of multi-UAVs, especially for large teams of UAVs. Although several collision avoidance approaches have been reported, there is a lack of highlighting the key components shared by these approaches. In this work, we aim to provide researchers with a state-of-the-art overview of various approaches for multi-UAV collision avoidance. The existing works on collision avoidance are presented through several classifications based on algorithm used and frameworks designed, and their main features are also discussed. A discussion on the literature summary in multi-UAV collision avoidance is given, Finally, the challenges in the research directions are presented.
Recently, multiple unmanned vehicles have attracted a great deal of attention as viable solutions to a wide variety of civilian and military applications. Among many topics in the field of multiple ...unmanned systems, formation control and coordination is of great importance. This paper presents a comprehensive literature review on the strategies and methodologies applied for formation control of multiple unmanned ground vehicles in both normal and faulty situations. First, the basic definitions of formation control and coordination are provided as well as their classification. Second, a comprehensive literature review of formation control strategies is introduced. Moreover, an overview on fault detection and diagnosis and fault-tolerant cooperative control of UGVs is presented. Finally, open problems, challenges, and future directions are highlighted.
Aim: The aim of this paper is to present the current state of knowledge on the reconnaissance of contamination in the automatic system by unmanned means. Introduction: The hypothetical threat of ...contamination in the territory of the Republic of Poland (RP) is growing. This threat may be caused by technolog-ical disasters and technical failures in industrial plants (including nuclear power plants) and also uncontrolled releases of highly toxic chemicals during transport, and in some cases, which cannot be ruled out, also by terrorism. This work introduces the dilemmas of the contamination reconnaissance system of the Polish Armed Forces, mainly their technical and organisational elements. It presents technical studies that have been used in NATO armies for the automated reconnaissance (detection) of contaminations. The basic operation of the system for the performance of its tasks is proposed. The implementation of automated systems would significantly increase the effectiveness of the Reconnaissance System of the Polish Armed Forces (SWS SZ RP), but also of other civil functional subsystems in the National Alert and Detection System (KSWSiA). Automated recognition systems have many advantages such as there being no need to expose staff to contamination and high mobility. Conclusions: There is a real threat that the territory of the Republic of Poland could become contaminated through the uncontrolled release of highly toxic chemicals from over 400 industrial plants that could be potential sources of major failures. Releases to the environment may be caused by natural factors (e.g. hurricanes, floods, earthquakes) or by unintentional (e.g. human error) or deliberate (e.g. act of terrorism) human activity. This analysis should not ignore threats posed by nuclear reactors located near the borders of the Republic of Poland and by pathogens. The Contamination Detection System of the Polish Armed Forces is incompatible in procedural terms with analogous solutions existing in NATO member states. In these countries it is preferable to use automated systems based on the latest technological developments, while in the Polish Armed Forces the systems employed are manually operated and obsolete. CBRN information management should be not only an instructional record, but a real element of the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defence (CBRN Defence) system. The task involving risk assessment and forecasting should be an anticipatory task based on present inventory levels in plants and contribute to planning the deployment of the elements of the Contamination Detection System. The contamination reconnaissance system, modelled on the basis of the solutions available in NATO armies, should employ automatic means such as lidar, drones and robots or their joint implementation – drones with lidar, robots with lidar or dropped micro-pallets (with a set of sensors and a signal analysis and alerting system) with a specific service life (e.g. 24 h) – such as the US Organic Air Vehicle.
The advance of technology has enabled the development of unmanned systems/vehicles used in the air, on the ground or on/in the water. The application range for these systems is continuously ...increasing, and unmanned platforms continue to be the subject of numerous studies and research contributions. This paper deals with the role of sensors and measurements in ensuring that unmanned systems work properly, meet the requirements of the target application, provide and increase their navigation capabilities, and suitably monitor and gain information on several physical quantities in the environment around them. Unmanned system types and the critical environmental factors affecting their performance are discussed. The measurements that these kinds of vehicles can carry out are presented and discussed, while also describing the most frequently used on-board sensor technologies, as well as their advantages and limitations. The paper provides some examples of sensor specifications related to some current applications, as well as describing the recent research contributions in the field.
This paper addresses a challenging problem to achieve energy-saving autonomous homing to the desired target for a parafoil/rocket system with high-altitude. The system is subject to external unknown ...crosswind disturbance during the process. A novel optimal multiphase homing algorithm with high-altitude considering constant wind is first presented. To reduce the time-varying wind disturbance, an improved adaptive path-following guidance law is developed. In this method, the arctangent function is extended to a general form, and the convergence rate is improved by replacing the function. Stability and convergence of the guidance law are shown in the sense of Lyapunov. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed homing strategy reduces the energy consumption when the initial altitude is too high, and the tracking errors convergence faster. Numerical simulation is further conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.
Currently, several platforms offer solutions for the management and control of fleets of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), addressing a wide range of scenarios, each with its own particular set of ...objectives. Some of these solutions are mission planning platforms for broader usage, without aiming to solve a single scenario. However, these often either do not support multi-UAV collaboration or generate a static flight trajectory, which does not facilitate the coordination of a fleet of several UAVs in a mission that may need to adapt to the current environment. Through the development of a domain-specific language (DSL) - EasyMission - for UAV mission definition and control, we introduce a mission planning framework that makes it possible to describe mission plans that also enable the user to define adjustments and constraints that may have to be taken into account in real-time according to sensor readings or other events. This framework enables inexperienced users to design missions with low or moderate complexity levels, while still being a useful tool for advanced users due to its versatility in addressing multiple scenarios through a single platform. We show how the mission framework is able to easily define differentiated mission examples with distinct purposes and scenarios, and with real-time decisions and constraints.
This paper considers the problem of fixed wing unmanned air vehicles following straight lines and orbits. To account for ambient winds, we use a path following approach as opposed to trajectory ...tracking. The unique feature of this paper is that we explicitly account for roll and flight path angle constraints. The guidance laws are derived using the theory of nested saturations, and explicit flight conditions are derived that guarantee convergence to the path. The method is validated by simulation and flight tests.
This article analyses data collected from press reports, social media, and the scientific literature on 338 instances of robots used explicitly in response to COVID-19 from 24 Jan, 2020, to 23 Jan, ...2021, in 48 countries. The analysis was guided by four overarching questions: (1) What were robots used for in the COVID-19 response? (2) When were they used? (3) How did different countries innovate? and 4) Did having a national policy on robotics influence a country’s innovation and insertion of robotics for COVID-19? The findings indicate that robots were used for six different sociotechnical work domains and 29 discrete use cases. When robots were used varied greatly on the country; although many countries did report an increase at the beginning of their first surge. To understand the findings of how innovation occurred, the data was examined through the lens of the technology’s maturity according to NASA’s Technical Readiness Assessment metrics. Through this lens, findings note that existing robots were used for more than 78% of the instances; slightly modified robots made up 10%; and truly novel robots or novel use cases constituted 12% of the instances. The findings clearly indicate that countries with a national robotics initiative were more likely to use robotics more often and for broader purposes. Finally, the dataset and analysis produces a broad set of implications that warrant further study and investigation. The results from this analysis are expected to be of value to the robotics and robotics policy community in preparing robots for rapid insertion into future disasters.
Multiple unmanned system control is a complex command and control endeavor but pairing human operators with an intelligent agent (IA) teammate can buttress the collection and synthesis of data and ...improve complex decision making. Effective human-autonomy teams (HATs) require human trust in IA teammates to be properly calibrated, which can be supported by communications pertaining to underlying functions of the IA, or “transparency”. One prominent guide for application of transparency is Chen and colleague's Situation awareness-based Agent Transparency (SAT) model. This effort sought to extend understanding of the application of this model by manipulating secondary transparency communication parameters: face threat (i.e., threat to a person's sense of social standing) and design of transparency communication (verbal, graphical, and iconographical). Results revealed that increasing face threat can improve reliance calibration at low transparency but may be detrimental when transparency is high. Outcomes concerning the method of transparency communication suggest that while verbal communication of transparency information is sufficient and even preferred when a low level of transparency is provided, reliance on graphical and iconographical approaches for presenting transparency information increases at a higher level of transparency.
•Face threat increased performance and reliance when transparency was low but was detrimental when transparency was high.•Face threat increased trust with low transparency but nullified trust increases typically seen with higher transparency.•Face threat affected operator task performance strategy and collaboration style even without changes in subjective trust.•Verbal communication of transparency information is preferred when low levels of transparency are provided.•Graphical communication of transparency information may be more useful as amount of transparency information increases.
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