(DURIP) TESTBED FOR AUTONOMY IN CONTESTED ENVIRONMENTS
Abstract
Current autonomous and semiautonomous systems provide a promising blueprint for the future development of autonomy. Still, the spectrum of systems amenable to autonomous control and reasoning is limited, and moreover the degree of autonomy in these systems is highly specialized. For example, most unmanned vehicles lack the flexibility, the range of performance, or the agility to react to a dynamically changing operational environment which are needed to achieve complete autonomy throughout an entire mission. Despite increasing research interest and advances, hardware-based demonstrations and validation of resulting autonomy algorithms—especially those that rely on the networked collaboration of a teamof autonomous systems in dynamic, uncertain and possibly contested environments—have had limited scope. This limitation stems partly from assets’ heterogeneous actuation, sensing payload, computational capabilities, and access to communication resources. The research instrumentation we propose to acquire aims to create such heterogeneity in hardware-based demonstrations and validation in order to investigate the effects of a wide range of potential disruptions in the autonomous assets, in the communication network and in remote computing platforms as well as deployment in both outdoor and indoor environments. This instrumentation will potentially impact a wide range of research, education and training activities. These activities span a number of disciplines, including controls, estimation, formal methods, learning, communication, networking, game theory and multi-agent systems, and application areas, including ground, aerial and space systems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 07, 2023
- Source ID
- FA95502210096
Entities
People
- Ufuk Topcu
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- United States Air Force
- University of Texas at Austin