DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR UNMANNED AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE COLLABORATIVE AUTONOMY WITH EMPHASIS ON LAYER INTERACTIONS

Abstract

As the U.S. Navy expands the role of unmanned vehicles in sea-denial and distributed maritime operations, there remains no unifying autonomy architecture with which to manage multi-vehicle mission execution. This inhibits the development of fieldable systems and limits their effectiveness, flexibility, and controllability. This thesis proposes a hierarchical framework consisting of the mission definition, mission autonomy, task description, and task autonomy layers that formalizes how high-level objectives are decomposed into actionable tasks for individual vehicles. Each layer’s inputs, outputs, and information exchanges are defined and validated through a series of whiteboard exercises for different mission scenarios. The results indicate that a unified autonomy framework can guide the development, implementation, and control of interoperable, mission-flexible unmanned-vehicle systems.