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7 Platform one Unmanned Systems Technology | August/September 2017 Combining an autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) with a number of small, low-cost UAVs that it controls with minimal human intervention is the concept at the heart of a patent granted recently to the Southwest Research Institute in Texas (writes Peter Donaldson). By concentrating most of the processing power in the AGV, the remotely controlled air vehicles can be kept relatively simple, according to the team of inventors led by Ryan Lamm. In addition to GNSS, the AGV has a suite of onboard sensors whose field of view covers the air vehicles, and its computers fuse its own sensor outputs with information Amazon Technologies is working on a system capable of pairing an easily portable airborne vehicle with a docking station that has a charger, a coprocessor and a very simple command interface (writes Peter Donaldson). The set-up, aimed at first responders such as firefighters, would provide them with a UAV without burdening them with specialised remote control equipment. The patented system would be small enough to be carried in a pocket or a bag, ready for speedy deployment, and would have enough autonomy to respond directly to a set of pre- programmed voice commands or those issued from a smartphone app or over a network. For example, the commands would be to find an object or a person, provide an elevated view of a situation or retrieve a small object. By distributing the processing power from sensors aboard the air vehicles, whose field of view also includes part of the path the AGV will follow. The AGV control system locates the air vehicles and, using the fused 3D sensor view, determines a path along the ground for itself and a route for the UAVs, which fly in response to its commands, avoiding obstacles and examining targets of interest. In this way, say the inventors, the AGV replaces a human operator as the UAVs’ controller, making decisions without the need for operator intervention. The human operator still maintains oversight, but only communicates with the AGV over a long-range, low-bandwidth, high-latency link to issue a minimum required to interpret commands between the vehicle and the docking station, the vehicle can be kept small, light and simple. The UAV might include a microphone to receive direct voice commands, which it would then interpret using voice recognition software either by itself or in concert with a coprocessor in the docking station. The system would then associate the command with a routine or subroutine that the vehicle could carry out without further instruction, providing outputs such of essential commands such as those required to start and end a mission. However, the AGV communicates with the air vehicles over a link with a much larger bandwidth and lower latency that has to download raw data from the air vehicles for processing and upload the AGV’s manoeuvre commands in real time. With the bulk of the computing power carried by the AGV, the air vehicle systems no longer have to carry out perception and decision-making or navigation tasks, leaving them to carry a specialised modular payload along with simple communication and flight control actuation mechanisms. The air vehicles might even be simple and cheap enough to be expendable, say the inventors. as a location and a picture of a found object, then return to the docking station. The amount of command interpretation demanded of the vehicle could depend on how it receives it. A voice command would need more, a command received through an app less, because the app might provide more of the interpretation itself. The architecture of the vehicle’s computer would include processors and a memory module, the latter including a command interpreter, a task module, a location module and a transceiver. Commanding concept Simple craft for a crisis Control systems Airborne vehicles Amazon is looking at ways for emergency services to use UAVs (Courtesy of Amazon)