A Mission Planning and Management System for UGVs with Language Translation and Graphical User Interface

As robots become more widely employed in tactical operations and gain greater autonomy for doing simple tasks, they must become more integrated into the processes of mission planning and management. This integration will come by means of standardized command and control interfaces mandated by the DoD and developed by the SAE AS-4 JAUS standards activity and proposed and upcoming SAE AS-4 standards Addressing UGV missions will require mission commanders to express mission plans in high level terms, using an intuitive interface, that does not require a significant amount of training, and makes use of symbology, language, and concepts that the war fighter is already familiar with. A mission planning system that exhibits these characteristics will accelerate both the technical and cultural adoption of UGVs within the Army and joint services. We propose to address some of the key questions related to how such a Mission Planning and Management System (MPMS) can be specified, designed, implemented, and tested. In this proposal, we present a plan to develop a fully functional prototype for an MPMS that can support the end-to-end workflow for tactical operations that include robotic support for missions such as route clearance, logistic convoys, persistent stare, and escort.