Advanced Command and Control Architectures for Autonomous Sensing

We propose to develop an innovative open architecture for the semi-autonomous command and control (C2) of teaming Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). The proposed architecture, based upon Toyon’s Decentralized Asset Management system, supports both centralized and decentralized fusion and control autonomy solutions as well as hybrids approaches. Leveraging STANAG-4586, TCP/IP, UPD, Google™ protobuffers, and ZeroMQ messaging, the architecture provides standard, open and flexible interfaces which support rapid innovation. Publish/subscribe mechanisms enable the real-time performance of individual autonomy components (e.g., asset mission and route planning) to be optimized based upon the available computing resources. The architecture supports plug-n-play of autonomy components running on different computers and operating systems and, when combined with the SLAMEM™ simulation, provides a complete testbed for the test and evaluation of competing components, advanced algorithms, and human-machine interface (HMI) technologies. In Phase I we will develop, document, and prototype the open architecture, construct an evaluation scenario, and demonstrate the architecture using our baseline autonomy components. In Phase II we will advance the architecture and interfaces, develop a new C2 application, develop a representative operational airborne maritime surveillance scenario, and evaluate the effectiveness of the semi-autonomous manned-unmanned teaming assets using the SLAMEM simulation.