A demonstration of distributed sensing and situational awareness systems

Exploiting Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV) sensors to augment data available from a ground based sensor system for enhancing operator situational awareness was one of the technological advances in distributed sensing demonstrated during a field trial held at Woomera in early July 2005. Electronic Support (ES) sensors aboard two UAVs and one ground based ES sensor were used to detect and geo-locate stationary radars placed at Woomera by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO). The positions of the two ES UAVs were dynamically controlled by virtual vector fields algorithms in the form of intelligent agents. The ES agent strategy was to move the UAVs to positions that would allow for optimal computation of the geo-location of multiple target radars. The estimated location of a radar was used to cue a third UAV with a Pan-Tilt-Zoom video payload. An Electro-Optic (EO) agent was used to take the EO UAV toward the threat location and then undertake a spiral search of the locality. A significant innovation demonstrated at this trial was the automatic acceptance of new way points into the (human supervised) aircraft control system. Streaming video and meta data about camera and aircraft orientation was also made available to a video geo-location system. The operator of this system was able to click on a feature in the streaming video to obtain a precise geo-location of an entity of interest and to track it for a short period of time. This paper discusses innovations demonstrated during this field trial.