Advanced Automated Tasking and Scheduling of sUAS Assets in a Multi-Domain Command and Control Platform

The proliferation of small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) among public safety agencies has created extraordinary opportunities and challenges for Headquarters Texas Air National Guard (TXANG) during Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) and Humanitarian Assistance for Disaster Relief (HADR) missions. DroneSense has already deployed a complete sUAS operations, management, and collaboration platform for public safety in which operators can securely fly sUAS from a variety of commercial off the shelf (COTS) manufacturers, stream video to remote collaborators and manage their fleet and data for all of their program's activities. Through the DroneSense platform, Headquarters TXANG  has access to hundreds or potentially thousands of individual airborne sensors responding to a national security event or humanitarian crisis. DroneSense proposes to examine solutions to two primary operational obstacles facing TXANG in attempting to manage and optimize these large-scale, federated response operations. First, DroneSense will research the development of a standardized, open architecture interface between DroneSense and Air Force Common Operating Picture (COP) software and incident management systems to enable the secure, bidirectional flow of intelligence information. Second, DroneSense will research opportunities to integrate multifaceted mission assignment techniques including geospatial tools and machine learning to optimize the deployment of heterogeneous sUAS fleets in complex operating environments.