An architecture for modeling uninhabited aerial vehicles

State-of-the-art advances in sensors, communication, and computing technologies have made military missions involving uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) a reality. UAVs are aircraft without the onboard presence of pilot or aircrew. Much of the UAV research has focused on the necessary electronic, mechanical, communication, and computing infrastructure, while equally important to mission success is the role of the human as a remote, supervisory controller. There is a need for an interactive modeling and simulator environment to support analysis of research issues associated with human interactions and automated control in the UAV domain. This article describes a computational environment for interactive modeling and simulation of uninhabited aerial vehicles. The environment, implemented in Java, is useful for emulating relevant characteristics of the human/system interaction for purposes of analysis. This paper outlines the design and evaluation of the architecture for modeling uninhabited aerial vehicles in the context of a prototypical military mission