Interactive Terrain Analysis

Although unmanned vehicles see increasing deployment, strategy and tactics are outpacing their technological capabilities. Advances in robotic control, human-systems interfaces, intelligent systems, vehicle autonomy and human-to-vehicle interfaces are required to lower human-to-vehicle ratios to levels required for future combat. We propose an architecture for computer-assisted control that relies on four basic subsystems: Intelligent Agent Interface, Low-Level Feature Processing, Robot Interface, and Human Interface. Each subsystem contains constituent components that have been deployed with success in military applications by the teammates on this proposal. The primary challenge is integrating these into a coherent human-system interface that integrates processed sensory information from robots, situational awareness interpretations and suggested courses of action from a decision support agent, tactical and strategic intelligence information from external sources, and mission intent information (and other data) from the human user. The integrated graphical interface, supplemented with variable levels of interaction with the intelligent decision support agent, will provide mixed levels of initiative and action between human controllers and unmanned ground robotic systems. The team has a unique combination of experience in developing knowledge-intensive intelligent agents, terrain analysis tools and interfaces, robotic platforms and simulators, processing systems for robot sensors and tactical robot control, and usable human-system interfaces.