Target Acquisition Cooperative Unmanned Vehicle System

Abstract

[Abstract] The goal of the Target Acquisition Cooperative (TAC) Unmanned Vehicle System (UVS) is to provide a group of autonomous vehicles that can work cooperatively to identify and classify targets in a predefined target area. TAC outlines three classes of vehicle: Eagle, Strike, and Rover. The first class, TAC Eagle, would be an eight foot wingspan aircraft that can fly high above the target area to identify possible targets. The second class is the TAC Strike, which would have a five foot wingspan,and provide the capability of target identification. The third class is TAC Rover, which would drive to identified targets and collect close range data. With the number of natural disasters that have happened over the past few years (Tsunamis in Indonesia, hurricanes in USA, earthquakes in Iran and Pakistan, etc.), the task of search and rescue operations has become an important element of initial activities, which could result in a reduction of fatalities. However, due to the environmental challenges and the magnitude of destruction, sometimes it is impossible for human search and rescue teams to penetrate the disaster area. Unmanned systems are an obvious solution to this problem; in particular autonomous unmanned systems, which could be sent out in large swarms to perform collaborative searches with very little manpower. With fewer operators able to operate a larger number of vehicles at once, increased autonomy is attractive. It is this interest in autonomous systems that is driving research at schools like Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU). In the ERAU Computer and Software Engineering (CSE) department, a group of students have been working on various projects over the past few years focusing on research and development of autonomous ground and air vehicles. A working TAC UVS is clearly ambitious for a small group of students, and it will probably be another year before the team accomplishes its goals. This report will focus on the journey thus far. The TAC team has attempted to gain a head start by integrating with the existing projects, although the integration itself presented some unexpected challenges over and above the project’s requirements. At this stage in the project, the team is evaluating various autonomous control methods with respect to their usefulness on the TAC project and has started work on creating new software to adapt the existing autonomous vehicle systems. Of course, the makeup of the development team has strongly influenced its approach to the problem. The development team is made up of computer and software engineering students; as a result the team tends to avoid hardware based solutions and would rather avoid working with the mechanical aspects of the vehicles. This has resulted in the use of off-the-shelf components wherever possible.