Manned-Unmanned Teaming
Autonomy is sometimes a difficult thing to define. There is a long-term model that may eventually eliminate all human involvement. For the foreseeable future, Autonodyne believes a supervisory human role will be essential.
We subscribe to the school of thought as described in ‘Our Robots, Ourselves’ that involves the human and machine working together by trading control and shifting levels of automation to suit the situation at hand. In certain times and places, the vehicle is very autonomous while in others, more human involvement is needed.
The capabilities provided by Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) technologies offer an enhanced level of interoperability between ground forces, manned aircraft, and Unmanned Vehicles (UVs).
The ability of both ground forces and manned aircraft to share UV products significantly increases situational awareness and improves the quality of decision-making.
For example, images acquired from the sensor payloads of UVs can be shared across the network. In the air domain, groups of low-cost attritable unmanned “loyal wingmen” act in unison with manned aircraft to serve as force multipliers by adding mass and quantity.
Autonodyne has been building and flight-testing systems that enable MUM-T since the company’s inception. We have built the on-board Mission Computer hardware and software and the off-board Control Station software for multiple MUM-T programs. Easy and clear handoff of control/custody is also a mainstay of successful MUM-T operations. These products have been flight tested in operational environments.
MUM-T with Autonomous Collaborative Platforms (ACP) is a principal application of our work in this area. Our designs use a task-based approach (e.g., “Follow Him”, “Loiter”, “Fly Over That”, “Surveil”, “Stage”, “Stack”, “RTB”, etc.) to provide operationally relevant functionality. This enables the human supervisor, the manned part of the manned-unmanned team, to significantly reduce the amount of cognitive bandwidth needed to control or direct the unmanned team members. This is equally applicable across multiple domains (air, sea, and land).
Manned-Unmanned Teaming with High-Performance UAS
We have been providing Human-Machine Interface software and autonomy control since 2016. In these images, we are working with a vehicle manufacturer to control their air vehicles from mobile tablet controls in manned fighter and Command/Control aircraft.
In the image to the right, we are simultaneously controlling two actual air vehicles and two simulated ones. Our software was hosted on the ruggedized tablet and connected to the airframes from the time they were ready to launch, throughout flight, and during recovery back on the ground. Optional voice control has been in place since 2019.
