Collaborative Localization and Secure Data Management to Enable CSAR/PR in GPS Denied Environments

The West Virginia University (WVU) Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources has created innovative Position/Navigation (PN) software for unmanned aerial and ground systems when operating in challenged environments, such as degraded or denied GPS. This distributed system with agents onboard and on the ground uses an Air Vehicle Data Network (AVDN) that requires Resilient Data Management (RDM) to secure and guarantee data integrity and privacy for onboard command and control and sensor data. Kinnami Software Corporation has developed a distributed RDM software platform, AmiShare, that secures data and assures their integrity wherever those data are stored or shared by mounting a secure data fabric on a mesh network, ideal for degraded environments. Using flight tests, our Phase II project demonstrated a Proof of Concept of 2 Commercial Off-The-Shelf drones navigating using WVU’s PN software. Separate simulated tests showed how Kinnami’s AmiShare can provide the reliable AVDN, required for trustworthy operation of WVU’s technology. 563d RQG wants to augment Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) capability by using UAVs in forward, hostile positions to locate isolated personnel and obtain their biometric data, despite degraded or denied GPS and radio spectrum. Currently, 563d RQG can only locate isolated personnel visually, and cannot communicate when the radio spectrum, and GPS, are degraded or denied. These are severe problems that are the top 3 strategic objectives for Personnel Recovery, Air Force-wide. This solution addresses key focus areas for Agility Prime, for ORB/eVTOL/UAM operations in disaster relief, humanitarian aid, and logistics supply missions, especially in degraded environments. WVU’s research specializes in robot localization technology for challenging environments, focusing on multi-sensor fusion, adaptive estimation algorithms for learning sensor uncertainties without prior knowledge, cooperative active perception to reduce localization errors through the motion planning ground robots and aerial robots, and the use of learning algorithms to assess environmental conditions. Kinnami is a software company that provides a resilient distributed data management and security platform, AmiShare, for the connected edge. AmiShare’s manages data security, protection, and availability by defining policies for who may access data and where data are stored everywhere on unreliable networks. This includes data centers, cloud, laptops, mobiles, removable drives and IoT. Data access and storage are audited and managed by administrators who define these policies, transparently to end-users. This Sequential Phase II STTR project proposes to extend the work completed by WVU and Kinnami in the original Agility Prime Phase II STTR to continue the testing and software improvement cycle with more elaborate flight tests in a more advanced PoC to demonstrate further how the integrated solution can help 563d, our customer, meet their mission needs.