Collaborative and Shared Control of Unmanned Vehicle Systems

The Navy is evolving into a force that will project power, assure access, and protect and advance America’s interests worldwide within an environment of reduced shipboard manning and increased operational efficiency. This confluence of events has resulted in an increase in the number and types of unmanned systems. In order to maximize the potential of these systems, there is a critical demand for technology which supports the operators, sensor specialists and commanders as they coordinate activity among multiple heterogeneous unmanned systems. Technological solutions that allow warfighters to rapidly and easily command and monitor the operation of unmanned vehicles (UVs) in a highly unpredictable world and receive needed situation awareness from UV sensors will facilitate this force transformation. Our goal for this SBIR is to develop and integrate technologies that support high levels of SA for distributed teams, built on a backbone of proven technology for UV mission planning and control. We will apply leading edge methods for designing systems to support SA, with specific attention to the critical factors that make SA challenging in UV operations, and have a solid foundation for ensuring high levels of shared SA across the distributed team.