Command & Control Tools For Air/Ground Unmanned System Collaboration

Unmanned system teams are quickly becoming a major player on the modern battlefield. As these systems become more prevalent and the control ratio of controllers to systems reverses to allow a single controller to operate multiple units, effective command and control systems become a paramount concern. To effectively control these systems, techniques for teaming unmanned systems to solve a problem, mechanisms to allow those units to understand the wishes and needs of the controller, and methods of communicating the status of the team to the controller must be devised. There has been a swell of research in the area of teaming and problem solving, but limited experience in heterogeneous systems, and less still in how to allow a single user to communicate effectively with that team to solve a problem. In the ACCAST system (Advanced Command and Control of Autonomous System Teams) project, ISX and it's partner CMU, will investigate potential solutions to this command and control problem, develop a series of metrics for evaluating various C&C techniques, and produce a trade study document outlining our findings and proposing the best solutions to the problem. This information will provide the US Army with a roadmap of how to proceed with integration of teamed unmanned systems command and control in future systems such as FCS.