Automatic Generation of System Plans for Autonomous Unmanned Systems

Abstract

Project Summary: The objective of the study is to leverage automatic programming in support of Systems Center Pacific (SSC-P) strategies for developing unmanned systems autonomy software. To apply artificial intelligence (AI) planning algorithms to this problem, research on suitable representations for mission plans and system plans is needed, along with principles for automatically deriving system plans from mission plans. The study also seeks to improve man-machine teaming for controlling unmanned/autonomous systems that perform Navy missions. Mission plans should be described at a conceptual level natural for the human operators of autonomous systems and suitable for enabling one operator to control a team of multiple autonomous systems. System plans must be sufficiently clear and detailed to be carried out by fully automated systems. Specific research objectives are to investigate the following questions: • What kinds of mission models are needed to support mission planning for teams of autonomous systems? • How can we formulate the distributed adaptive planning general case to allow rigorous research in the area? • How can autonomous systems plans be represented to enable automatic system plan generation from mission plans?