Many environmental problems cover large areas, often in rough terrain constrained by natural obstacles, which makes intervention difficult. New technologies, such as unmanned aerial units, may help to address this issue. Due to their suitability to access and easily cover large areas, unmanned aerial units may be used to inspect the terrain and make a first assessment of the affected areas; how...

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 proposes a multidrone approach for autonomous cinematography planning. The use of drones for aerial cinematography is becoming a trend. Therefore, the aerial cinematography opens a new field of application for autonomous platforms that need to develop intelligent capabilities. This becomes even more challenging if a team of multiple drones are considered for cooperation. This paper i...

...................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv CHAPTER

Acknowledgements List of figures ..................................................................6

Explosive growth and an expanding range of applications for employing unmanned/autonomous systems, coupled with a disparate and growing list of users of autonomous systems, will continue to challenge the ability to implement a coherent and unified approach in the development, transition, and effective integration of cutting-edge autonomous systems technology safely into the National Airspace Sy...

Position and attitude set-point regulation of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) is presented. Euler parameters are used in the representation of global attitude. Three quaternion feedback controllers are derived based on vector quaternion, Euler rotation and Rodrigues parameter feedback, respectively. Global asymp-totic stability is proven in the rst and second...

The most challenging technical problems facing successful autonomous UGV operation in off-road environments are reliable sensing and perception. In this paper, we describe our progress over the last year toward solving these problems in Phase II of DARPA’s PerceptOR program. We have developed a perception system that combines laser, camera, and proprioceptive sensing elements on both ground and...

Technologies for Reliable Autonomous Control (TRAC) is a DARPA sponsored effort under the Software Enabled Control (SEC) initiative. The goal of T U C is to develop and demonstrate a fundamentally different approach to controlling uninhabited air vehicles (UAVs) that will enable greater mission capability, higher reliability and safety, and greater adaptability to vehicle and mission environmen...

Today’s autonomous vehicles operate within an increasingly larger set of environments compared to earlier more controlled environments. In particular, unmanned ground vehicles (UGV’s) must be able to travel on whatever terrain the mission offers, including sand, mud, or even snow. These terrains can affect the performance and controllability of the vehicle. Like a human driver who feels his veh...