This paper assesses the feasibility of organizing unmanned aviation as free flight. We do this by estimating the frequency of occurrence of large de-confliction problems. Statistics of these frequencies are measures of air traffic complexity appropriate for unmanned air traffic management. These complexity measures increase with air traffic density. Data suggests as many as 100,000 unmanned fli...

Unmanned systems have been cited as one of the future enablers of all the services to assist the warfighter in dominating the battlespace. The potential benefits of unmanned systems are being closely investigated – from providing increased and potentially stealthy surveillance, removing the warfighter from harms way, to reducing the manpower required to complete a specific job. In many instance...

There is a common misconception in the testing industry that all unmanned autonomous systems can be tested using methodologies developed to test manned systems. A tester can incorrectly state that driving a manned vehicle is conceptually identical to driving an unmanned vehicle; the only difference lies in the position of the operator. In actuality, the main difference lies in the unmanned auto...

This paper assesses the feasibility of organizing unmanned aviation as free flight. We do this by estimating the frequency of occurrence of large de-confliction problems. Statistics of these frequencies are measures of air traffic complexity appropriate for unmanned air traffic management. These complexity measures increase with air traffic density. Data suggests as many as 100,000 unmanned fli...

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) released a report detailing the future of robotic military equipment and how to proceed in development and procurement of unmanned systems (Office of Secretary of Defense, 2007). This document recognizes the role of unmanned systems in the areas of reconnaissance, surveillance, and target identification. This role for unmanned systems implies a need...

Unmanned vehicles or robots promise to increase the operational range of the armed forces while reducing the exposition of personnel to hazardous conditions. They have traditionally been in use for aerial surveillance and ground based explosive ordnance disposal. Following the ongoing progress in research and technology, unmanned vehicles have the potential to play a much more versatile role in...

In this article, we attempt to document a technical overview on modern miniature unmanned rotorcraft systems. We first give a brief review on the historical development of the rotorcraft unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and then move on to present a fairly detailed and general overview on the hardware configuration, software integration, aerodynamic modeling and automatic flight control system ...

The paper presents a method of terrain classification and path planning for unmanned ground vehicles. The terrain classification is done on imagery that is acquired from UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) or satellite and is used for UGV (unmanned ground vehicle) path planning thus introducing collaboration capabilities to the system of two. The system complements the UGV on-board navigation system ...

This paper provides an overview of the initial position and rationale regarding the development of an unmanned ship. This is based on the proposal for the EU-funded project MUNIN (Maritime Unmanned Navigation through Intelligence in Networks). Based on the European vision of an autonomous ship, MUNIN’s understanding of autonomy, its contribution towards a sustainable maritime transport system a...

This paper presents an idea-phase introduction of a tactical level communication system (battalion and below). The introduced communication system utilizes Unmanned Aircraft Systems to ensure the message throughput and to receive and transmit large quantities of data requiring wide bandwidth. The introduced communication system enables utilizing different waveforms and frequencies when communic...