A Systematic Approach to Mission and Scenario Planning for UAVs (original) (raw)
Related papers
2016
Title of Thesis: Mission and Scenario Planning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Path planning and Collision Avoidance systems) Niloofar Shadab, Master of Science, 2016 Thesis directed by: Professor Huan Xu Institute for Systems Research As unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) are being widely utilized in military and civil applications, concerns are growing about mission safety and how to integrate different phases of mission design. One important barrier to a costeffective and timely safety certification process for UAVs is the lack of a systematic approach for bridging the gap between understanding high-level commander/pilot intent and implementation of intent through low-level UAV behaviors. In this thesis we demonstrate an entire systems design process for a representative UAV mission, beginning from an operational concept and requirements and ending with a simulation framework for segments of the mission design, such as path planning and decision making in collision avoidance. In t...
Annual Reviews in Control, 2005
This paper reviews aspects of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) autonomy as suggested by the Autonomous Control Logic chart of the U.S. DoD UAV autonomy roadmap; levels of vehicle autonomy addressed through intelligent control practices and a hierarchical/intelligent control architecture are presented for UAVs. Basic modules of the control hierarchy and their enabling technologies are reviewed; of special interest, from an intelligent control perspective, are the middle and high echelons of the hierarchy. Here, mission planning, trajectory generation and vehicle navigation routines are proposed for the highest level. At the middle level, the control role is portrayed by mode transitioning, envelope protection, real-time adaptation and fault detection/control reconfiguration algorithms which are intended to safeguard the UAV's integrity in the event of component failures, extreme operating conditions or external disturbances. The UAV thus exhibits attributes of robustness and operational reliability assuring a satisfactory degree of autonomy. The control technologies are demonstrated through flight testing results. #
A decision-making framework for safe operations of unmanned aerial vehicles in urban scenarios
Annual Conference of the PHM Society
This paper presents a decision-making scheme at the level of individual unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with the goal of maintaining safe operations for urban mobility. The decision-making approach for a single UAV will consider the risks associated with the current trajectory given the existing environmental conditions and the state of the vehicle. The proposed scheme combines the analysis of system performance, environmental conditions, and mission level parameters for contingency management, i.e., make a determination on: (1) to abort mission and land safely; (2) re-plan current mission in full or abbreviated form; and (3) change mission. A path planning and trajectory optimization algorithm with the goal of minimizing the overall risk of mission failure by considering a number of factors such as the uncertainties in the environment and operating state of the vehicle is proposed. We will consider the mission failure as the loss of control of the vehicle resulting in a collision ...
Mission Aware Flight Planning for Unmanned Aerial Systems
AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference and Exhibit, 2008
The development of Flight Control Systems (FCS) coupled with the availability of other Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) components is enabling the introduction of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the civil market. UAS have great potential to be used in a wide variety of civil applications such as environmental applications, emergency situations, surveillance tasks and more. In general, they are specially well suited for the so-called D-cube operations (Dirty, Dull or Dangerous). Current technology greatly facilitates the construction of UAS. Sophisticated flight control systems also make them accessible to end users with little aeronautical expertise. However, we believe that for its successful introduction into the civil market, progress needs to be made to deliver systems able to perform a wide variety of missions with minimal reconfiguration and with reduced operational costs. Most current flight plan specification mechanisms consist in a simple list of waypoints, an approach that has important limitations. This paper proposes a new specification mechanism with semantically richer constructs that will enable the end user to specify more complex flight plans. The proposed formalism provides means for specifying iterative behavior, conditional branching and other constructs to dynamically adapt the flight path to mission circumstances. Collaborating with the FCS, a new module on-board the UAS will be in charge of executing these plans. The paper also presents a prototype implementation of this module and the results obtained in simulations.
A Decision-Making Framework for Safe Operations of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Urban Environments
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This paper develops an offline decision-making framework to support safe urban operations of individual unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) flights. The core of the proposed framework is the analysis of the probability of mission failure and the corresponding risk of flight as a function of two factors: (1) collision with obstacles, and (2) crashes attributed to the degraded state of the vehicle. The risk computation is associated with specific trajectories defined by a set of way points. Our experimental studies consider a UAV mission fails when (1) it collides with other objects, or (2) the battery charge is depleted below a threshold. The decision making system automatically selects the mission plan that minimizes risk of flight by considering the state of the vehicle, the environmental conditions, and a map of the environment.
Highly autonomous UAV mission planning and piloting for civilian airspace operations
2005
The last decade has seen a rapid increase in the development and deployment of Unmanned Airborne Vehicles (UAVs). Previous UAVs have been capable of useful missions with a limited degree of on-board intelligence. However, more on-board intelligence is required to fully exploit the potential of UAVs. The objective of this research is to increase the on-board intelligence in two areas: mission planning; and mission piloting. Thereby improving the integration of a UAV into civilian airspace and reducing operator workload. This paper presents the research towards the development of the Intelligent Mission Planner and Pilot. The IMPP enables a UAV to autonomously plan and to perform missions within civilian airspace. The IMPP employs a novel multidisciplinary approach, exploiting robotics, 3D graphics and computer science techniques. Results are presented based upon testing using real world data from south-east Queensland. These results demonstrate the performance achieved by the mission planning and piloting algorithms.
Implementation of a Manned Vehicle - UAV Mission System
AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit, 2004
We discuss the development, integration, simulation, and flight test of a manned vehicle -UAV mission system in a partially-known environment. The full control system allows a manned aircraft to issue mission level commands to an autonomous aircraft in realtime. This system includes a Natural Language (NL) Interface to allow the manned and unmanned vehicle to communicate in languages understood by both agents. The unmanned vehicle implements a dynamic mission plan determined by a weapons systems officer (WSO) on the manned vehicle. The unmanned vehicle uses a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) based trajectory planner to direct the vehicle according to the mission plan. We provide simulation and test results for this system using an integrated computer-based simulation and the vehicle hardware testing in late June 2004. The activities described in this paper are part of the Capstone demonstration of the DARPA-sponsored Software Enabled Control effort. * Student Member AIAA, Ph.D. candidate,
Evaluating UAS Autonomy Operations Software in Simulation
AIAA Infotech@Aerospace 2007 Conference and Exhibit, 2007
We describe a software simulation test bed for evaluating Concepts of Operation (CONOPS) for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) flying earth science missions. The Mission Operational Concept Evaluation Framework (MOCEF) aids in the rapid evaluation of proposed system automation designs, including intelligent controllers for vehicles, sensor payloads, and decision support systems, on a wide range of missions. Such broad evaluation is prohibitively expensive when limited to physical experiments and real missions.
Mission Planning, Simulation and Supervision of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with a Gis-Based Framework
Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, 2006
A framework for mission planning, simulation and supervision of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) has been developed. To provide a rich context for mission planning an Enhanced Reality is created from Geographic Information System (GIS) sources and dynamic aggregation of available geo-referenced data. The mission is expressed as statements and expressions of the Aerial Vehicle Control Language (AVCL), the abstraction mechanism needed to bridge the gap between a strategic mission planner and a heterogenous group of vehicles and active payloads. The framework is extendable by design and its aimed at the integration of diverse vehicles with existing systems. It has been tested as a Mission Planning and Simulation tool with our real-time small helicopter model.