Wingman/Fieldops: Enhancing Teleoperation of Teamed Robotic Platforms

The US Government is exploring concepts of collaborative manned-unmanned warfighting units, with soldiers controlling one or more unmanned platforms acting in cooperation as wingmen to their manned unit on the battlefield.A major challenge to this concept is how to enable effective, efficient teleoperation of multiple units under highly variable circumstances and environments.In this effort, the proposers will leverage and adapt FieldOps teleoperation technology to augment operators, providing an improved teleoperation experience that allows task execution, supports vehicle survivability, and helps to address cognitive loading and distraction issues.This effort will rely heavily upon modeling and simulation, leveraging ANVEL to support development, virtual development and testing, and mixed live/virtual testing with Army systems.This program will advance and apply FieldOps technology to the US Army Wingman concept, demonstrate state-of-the-art teleoperation technology, build upon current Army M&S activities with ANVEL, and facilitate better understanding of the possibilities and potential of manned-unmanned teaming concepts.