A mixed simulation and hardware-in-the-loop display and controller for autonomous sensing and navigation by unmanned air vehicles

Abstract

This paper describes our recent work combining a high-fidelity battlefield software simulaton, a suite of autonomous sensor and navigation control algorithms for unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), and a hardware-in-the-loop control interface. The complete system supports multiple real and simulated UAVs that search for and track multiple real and simulated targets. Targets communicate their real-time locations to the simulator through a wireless GPS link. Data from real target(s) is used to create target(s) in the simulation testbed that may exist alongside additional simulated targets. The navigation and video sensors onboard the UAVs are tasked (via another wireless link) by our control algorithm suite to search for and track targets that exist in the simulation. Video data is streamed to an image plane video tracker (IPVT), which produces detections that can be fed to a global tracker within the control suite. Routing and gimbal control algorithms use information from the global tracker to task the UAVs, thus completing an information feedback control loop. Additional sensors (such as the ground moving target indicator (GMTI) radar) can exist within the simulation and generate simulated detections to augment the tracking information obtained from the IPVT. Our simulator is part of Toyon's Simulation of the Locations and Attack of Mobile Enemy Missiles (SLAMEM (R) ) tool. SLAMEM contains detailed models for ground targets, surveillance platforms, sensors, attack aircraft, UAVs, data exploitation, multi-source fusion, sensor retasking, and attack nomination. SLAMEM models road networks, foliage cover, populated regions, and terrain, using the terrain elevation data (DTED).