Planning and modeling extensions to the Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS) for application to unmanned ground vehicles

Abstract

This paper describes how the functionality of the DoD Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS) was expanded by developing experimental components related to off-line and reactive path planning and world modeling. JAUS defines a set of reusable components and their interfaces. In order to ensure that the JAUS architecture will be applicable to the entire domain of unmanned mobile systems, the following four characteristics were considered throughout its development: vehicle platform independence, mission isolation, hardware independence, and technology independence. The new experimental components described in this paper have these same characteristics. Existing JAUS components readily allow for autonomous path tracking. In this work the JAUS Version 3.0 Global Path Segment Driver, Global Pose Sensor, Velocity State Sensor, and Primitive Driver components were utilized for that task. What is described in this paper is the development of the following new experimental components: World Model, Sensor Arbiter, and Path Manager. The functionality and interface messages of each of these components are presented, followed by a discussion of the performance of the overall system.