autonomous UAV, chemical sensing, gas distribution modelling, gas source localization, gas sensors, mobile sensing system, quadrocopter, sensor planning, artificial potential field
anemometric sensor, autonomous Micro UAV, chemical sensing, gas distribution modelling, gas source localization, gas sensors, mobile sensing system, quadrocopter, sensor planning, artificial potential field
Abstract: As UAV systems become more and more sophisticated in terms of intelligence and autonomy,
it becomes increasingly important to find a common language between human operators and
the automation. Not only should the UAV system make good decisions, its decisions should
also be transparent to the operator. This paper looks at the issue of interfacing UAV operators
with their work domain and explores how principles from cognitive system engineering can be
used to provide a shared representation for the system and its operators. Such a shared
representation should allow natural interaction between multiple autonomous agents and
human actors. They should be able to understand each other’s actions in the context of the
work domain.
Abstract: Integration of UAVs with Air Traffic Control (ATC) is a world wide problem. ATC is already troubled by capacity
problems due to a vast amount of air traffic. In the future when large numbers of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(UAVs) will participate in the same airspace, the situation cannot afford to have UAVs that need special attention.
Regulations for UAV flights in civil airspace are still being developed but it is expected that authorities will require
UAVs to operate ‘like manned aircraft’. The implication is that UAVs need to become full participants of a complex
socio-technical environment and need to generate ‘man like’ decisions and behavior. In order to deal with the
complexity a novel approach to developing UAV autonomy is needed, aimed to create an environment that fosters
shared situation awareness between the UAVs, pilots and controllers. The underlying principle is to develop an
understanding of the work domain that can be shared between people and UAVs. A powerful framework to
represent the meaningful structure of the environment is Rasmussen’s abstraction hierarchy. This paper proposes
that autonomous UAVs can base their reasoning, decisions and actions on the abstraction hierarchy framework and
communicate about their goals and intentions with human operators. It is hypothesized that the properties of the
framework can create ‘shared situation awareness’ between the artificial and human operators despite the
differences in their internal workings.
Abstract: The abstraction-sophistication analysis has been developed in extension of the abstraction hierarchy to aid the design for effective human-automation interaction for vehicale control systems. The new analysis framework is applied to the mini UAV system being developed at the D-CIS lab and TUDelft.
Abstract: This deliverable is a demonstrator of the preliminary UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) system software packaged for the control and simulation of mini UAVs. The software package allows actual operation of mini UAVs (under development), hardware in the loop simulation and full simulation.
The demonstrator simulates the flight of four UAVs of the EasyStar type above a virtual compound near Kandahar, Afghanistan. The mission over Afghanistan was inspired by participating in the Frame Game 2006. The software supports missions with true WGS84 (GPS) coordinates around the world when the appropriate maps are provided. At this time the Kandahar map is fully supported but maps of Delft and Braunschweig (Germany) have also been loaded in earlier versions.
This version allows the simulation of a typical mission for the UAVs, which is to patrol the perimeter of a compound. The payload of the UAVs is a color camera which is used for obtaining visual information of the surroundings. At the time of this demonstrator the UAVs are controlled by uploading a flight plan consisting of waypoints from the ground control station (GCS) to the UAVs. This allows the operator to send UAVs on a route around the perimeter for visual inspection of the presence of hostiles. The software supports any civil application in the same degree as military applications, for example search tasks as part of a search and rescue team.
Abstract: This deliverable is a demonstrator of the preliminary UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) system software packaged for the control and simulation of mini UAVs. The software package allows actual operation of mini UAVs (under development), hardware in the loop simulation and full simulation.
The demonstrator simulates the flight of four UAVs of the EasyStar type above a virtual compound near Kandahar, Afghanistan. The mission over Afghanistan was inspired by participating in the Frame Game 2006. The software supports missions with true WGS84 (GPS) coordinates around the world when the appropriate maps are provided. At this time the Kandahar map is fully supported but maps of Delft and Braunschweig (Germany) have also been loaded in earlier versions.
This version allows the simulation of the Aero-DPN UAV-Flight. In this scenario the UAV is located at a sports field upwind from the stadium in Lima city (Brussels) where an explosion has taken place. A flightplan can be loaded to guide the UAV along a number of waypoints where radiation measurements will be taken and sent to the DPN software (not part of this bundle, by Gregor Pavlin). This scenario serves to demonstrate how the UAV can be deployed in a crisis scenario and be combined with other ICIS projects software (DPN). In addition to the first release this version better supports the human operator to control the UAV in a flexible manner.
