Modeling manned and unmanned systems

Abstract

Unmanned systems are being introduced rapidly into operational forces. However, there is little capability in modeling the performance of manned systems and unmanned systems to distinguish the two, making it impossible, currently, to use simulation for analysis of future manned/unmanned system force mixes and most effective levels of autonomy for unmanned systems. The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), Monterey, California, was sponsored by the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise (JGRE) in Fiscal Year 2016 (FY16) to explore (1) enhancement of robotics education; (2) improved representation of robotic systems in combat simulations; and (3) interoperability standards for military robotics systems. This report discusses work performed in FY16 to investigate the state-of-the-art in modeling human and unmanned systems, current challenges in such modeling, and to prototype new approaches in an existing analytical simulation, the Combined Arms Analysis Tool for the 21st Century (COMBATXXI) used by the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps. The project also initiated investigation of existing government-off-the-shelf robotics software frameworks for possible use in simulating unmanned systems in the combat simulation. Those software systems and the status of work performed are also presented in this report.