Command and Control of Teams of Autonomous Units
Abstract
Command and Control (C2) has always been the practice of directing teams of autonomous units. These units have included individual soldiers, aircraft directed by a pilot, and ships maneuvered and fought by the combined intelligence of an entire crew. It is into this already populated universe that we are now working to add autonomous unmanned systems (AUS). In this paper, we explore the C2 of teams of autonomous units that include human, human populated, and uninhabited systems. Beyond the simple one-for-one substitution of a manned vehicle by an unmanned vehicle, we consider the reality that AUS share information differently among themselves and their inhabited counterparts. Similarly, humans and human populated units will provide information to their commanders in a different fashion than machines will, because each are uniquely capable of different observations and understandings. This paper also describes the sparse supervisory control that must be exercised over highly autonomous units, and considers what it means for a commander to supervise AUS that employ machine learning and cooperative autonomy.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA570196
Entities
People
- Douglas S. Lange
- John Reeder
- Phillip Verbancsics
- Robert S Gutzwiller
Organizations
- Naval Information Warfare Systems Command