Automation Architecture and Testbed for UAV Supervisory Control

This research will result in an architecture and the associated testbed for the implementation and evaluation of methods of managing automation in UAVs under supervisory control. The architecture will support varying native UAV capabilities and ground station automation, as well as the presentation of various user interface components. This will allow the implementation of both adaptable and adaptive automation support, and the exploration of approaches that make the automation support both comprehensible and predictable. The architecture will be realized in a testbed that simulates operations of multiple UAVs in a battlefield environment. The testbed will also support the creation and presentation of differing yet repeatable mission scenarios and the logging of the necessary data for evaluating the performance of a human operator executing a mission. These goals will be accomplished by extending and integrating two existing systems. The first is the MIIIRO human factors testbed which is already being used to examine operator performance of multi-UAV missions. The second is Playbook which uses a delegation approach for controlling automation and has been demonstrated on UAV and other robotic systems.