UAVs as aviators: Environment skills capability for UAVs

To reduce the workload of flying an Unmanned Areal Vehicle (UAV), some of the tasks of the human operator can be automated. In the Levels Of Sophistication (LOS) structure, the capabilities of a UAV system are subdivided. Using this structure, the capabilities concerned with the aviating of an UAV are selected to be automated for this research. The task of the aviating capabilities of an UAV is to integrate all the higher level mission and navigation constraints with constraints from the environment, in order to find a route for the UAV to fly which is safe and efficient. This is done by expressing the constraints in cost maps. The A* pathfinding algorithm then uses these cost maps to find a route for the UAV to fly, taking into account these constraints. The UAV aviating automation has been implemented in a simulation program. The system is capable of finding the best route in the cost map representing the constraints from different levels of sophistication, and let the UAV fly this route in the simulation. The complete automation system was tested in the 2007 Micro UAV flight competition, where the UAV was required to execute some autonomous tasks.