Collaborative Micro Aerial Vehicle Exploration of Outdoor Environments

Abstract

Field personnel, such as soldiers, police SWAT teams, and first responders, face challenging, dangerous environments, often with little advance knowledge or information about their surroundings. Currently this Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance (ISR) information is provided by satellite imagery and prior or second-hand experiences. Although satellite imagery is currently the preferred method for gaining Situational Awareness (SA) about an outdoor environment, it has many shortcomings. Recent efforts have led to the creation of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs), a class of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), which are small and have autonomous capabilities. At most a few feet in size, a MAV can hover in place, perform Vertical Take-Off and Landing, and easily rotate with a small sensor payload. The compact size of these vehicles and their maneuvering capabilities make them well-suited for performing highly localized ISR missions with MAV operator working within the same environment as the vehicle. Unfortunately, existing interfaces for MAVs ignore the needs of field operators, requiring bulky equipment and the operator's full attention. To be able to collaboratively explore an environment with a MAV, an operator needs a mobile interface which can support the need for divided attention. To address this need, a Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) was performed with the intended users of the interface to assess their needs, as well as the roles and functions a MAV could provide. Based on this CTA, a set of functional and information requirements were created which outlined the necessities of an interface for exploring an environment with a MAV. Based on these requirements, the Micro Aerial Vehicle Exploration of an Unknown Environment (MAV-VUE) interface was designed and implemented.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA530912

Entities

People

  • David Pitman

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Birds
  • Cognitive Systems Engineering
  • Cognitive Workload
  • Control Systems
  • Detectors
  • Ground Control Stations
  • Health Services
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Micro Air Vehicles
  • Mobile Devices
  • Mobile Phones
  • Network Protocols
  • Task Performance And Analysis
  • Unmanned Aerial Systems
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Unmanned Vehicles

Readers

  • Aerial Unmanned Vehicle Swarm Micro Periodontal Dentistry.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.
  • Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Autonomous Capabilities and Mission Reconnaissance.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - Human-Robot Interaction
  • Autonomy - UAVs
  • Space
  • Space - Spacecraft Maneuvers