Home // International Journal On Advances in Intelligent Systems, volume 5, numbers 1 and 2, 2012 // View article

Concept, Design and Evaluation of Cognitive Task-based UAV Guidance

Authors:
Johann Uhrmann
Axel Schulte

Keywords: task-based guidance; goal-driven behaviour; artificial cognititive units; artificial cognition; level of automation

Abstract:
This paper discusses various aspects of automation for the integration of multiple, detached, unmanned sensor platforms into a military helicopter scenario. The considered scenario incorporates operating over unknown, potentially unsafe terrain including ad-hoc mission orders issued to the crew even during flight. Unmanned sensor platforms provide mission-relevant real-time reconnaissance and surveillance information to the crew and therefore lead to an increase in mission performance. To achieve this, the UAVs (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles) shall be automated beyond the level of commonly used systems, i.e., autopilots and waypoint guidance. Instead the human operator shall be enabled to transfer authority to the unmanned platforms in a well-defined manner just like in tasking human subordinates. Automatic task execution is achieved by installing knowledge-based and goal-driven agents based on artificial cognition on the unmanned platforms for planning and decision-making. These agents allow the human operator to assign tasks to the UAVs on an abstraction level which is comparable to the supervision of human subordinates within a mission. This paper presents the concept and design of such artificial cognitive agents. A novel views on levels of automation will be discussed. The required knowledge driving the cognitive automation will be explained and the results of the evaluation of the system with subject matter experts will be discussed. The results, which include measures of the overall mission performance, operators’ interaction, behaviour, workload, situation awareness and acceptance ratings, indicate that task-based UAV guidance is feasible, accepted and beneficial in military helicopter operations.

Pages: 145 to 158

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2012. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2012

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2679