Aeroflightdynamics: Human Systems Interface Team Participates in Joint US/Germany Multi-UAS Manned/Unmanned Teaming Research

November 2019

To date, current research on Manned/Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) assumes all Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) will maintain a well-connected link back to their Air Mission Commander (AMC), but practically this is rarely the case. This is due to the large bandwidth required for communication, the physical environment locations these missions occur in, the defensive abilities of near-peer threats on the battlefield, or the AMC might intentionally sever the datalink for mission stealth. The US Army Aviation Development Directorate (ADD) Human Systems Interface (HSI) team has partnered with the German Armed Forces at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, Germany on the Multi-UAS Manned/Unmanned Teaming Limited Datalink Communication project that directly addresses these challenges under the US/Germany Project Agreement (PA) on Advanced Technologies for Rotorcraft. The key objectives of this PA task are to increase situational awareness by tasking UAS behavior and accurately predicting UAS mission completion status when no datalink is active, as well reporting the vast information back to the AMC once datalink has been re-established in a meaningful way that is robust yet still easy to parse.

In late September, several ADD research team members, including Joseph Gunderson, the USRA/NAMS software developer under the Aeroflightdynamics technical area, travelled to Germany to participate in the bi-annual PA meeting, where project progress since the last meeting held at NASA Ames in May 2019 were presented and discussed. At the meeting, the features for the GUI mocked-up by Joe were successfully integrated into the flight simulator at the Bundeswehr University in Munich and showcased during the presentation. The system was evaluated by experienced test pilots from both Germany and US, who have provided valuable feedback which allowed for a unique insight on what metrics can be best used during the experimental trials and which features to include in the scenario vignettes in order to measure mission effectiveness. A follow-on PA meeting is planned to take place in May 2020 at NASA Ames to conclude this phase of the collaborative project.