Autonomous Control Technologies for Terminal Area Operations

Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) participation in controlled airspace requires that the UAV behave just as a human-piloted aircraft. Forward airbases with Air Traffic Control (ATC) can be complex when considering ATC commands, localization in a GPS denied environment, flight restrictions, FAA rules, and dynamic obstacles. SARA proposes a behavior-based system that deconfliction these complexities, allowing the UAV to operate safely in the Terminal Area of Operations (TAO). The proposed behavior-based “Autonomous Pilot” uses concurrent simple behaviors to produce emergent complex behaviors. An objective function based solver calculates weights and preferred actions of the individual behaviors to arbitrate an optimum vehicle action. To facilitate development and eventual transfer of the Autonomous Pilot to actual UAV hardware, SARA proposes a modular control architecture. Our proposed “Autonomous Pilot- Multi-Objective Deconfliction” (APMOD) system is based on the “Mission Oriented Operating Suite” (MOOS) architecture. The modularity allows simulation modules during the development phase to be replaced with hardware integration modules as the program develops into hardware-in-the-loop solutions and eventually into actual UAV platforms.