Courses of Action Display for Multi-Unmanned Vehicle Control: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach

Operational concepts in which a single operator teams with multiple autonomous vehicles are now considered feasible due to advances in automation technology. This will require that an operator be able to express a high-level intent, or goal, to the vehicle team rather than direct the actions of individual assets. Successful operator-autonomy collaboration must quickly capture the operator's intent and then portray the autonomy's trade-offs between different courses of action in an intuitive interface. This paper describes how a multi-disciplinary effort was employed in the design of a display that highlights the trade-off of autonomy-generated plans and supports the efficient allocation of assets to surveillance tasks. Our novel control station approach combines domain modeling and multi-objective optimization with innovative interfaces to enable a single operator to effectively command a team of unmanned vehicles.