Navigation, Scene Understanding, and Situational Awareness for an Unmanned Ground Vehicle

The objective of this project is to design and implement a system toprovide accurate position and situational awareness for an unmannedground vehicle (UGV). These tasks will be accomplished by a modularsystem where each module will accomplish the functionsof (1)navigation (2) scene understanding and (3) situational awareness. Inorder to accomplish these functions, we will design and develop threemodules. The Positioning Sensor Module (PSM) will address navigation,Local-scene Sensor Module (LSM) willaddress scene understanding andthe Internal Representation Module (IRM) will address situationalawareness.The focus of Phase I will be on: (1) demonstrating the capability ofthe scene understanding tasks (the Local-scene Sensor Module) and (2)the design ofan architecture for the three modules (PSM fornavigation, LSM for scene understanding, and IRM for situationalawareness).Phase II will focus on all the modules and demonstrate their capabilities via field tests using on a UGV.The project team is composedof Scientific Systems Company Inc (SSCI),The Sarnoff Corporation and the Center for Self-Organizing andIntelligent Systems (CSOIS) at Utah State University.This SBIR projectwill complement these ongoing efforts between CSOIS and TACOM and focus ondeveloping the position sensing and situational awareness system.During the course of this project the CSOIS UGVs will serve as aplatform for the basis of our design and demonstrations.The development of the above core technologies in positionsensing andsituational awareness for a UGV will serve as a foundationfor Phase III commercialization. Commercial application of thistechnology exist in several areas such as: remote sensing, road andbridge inspection, buried and/or hazardous waste detection,unmanned space exploration, and counter terrorism.