NATO STO IST-206

Description

Interoperability for Cooperating Unmanned Ground Vehicles

Additional Description

The group will investigate standards to facilitate interoperability between UGVs and possible C2 systems. This includes open standards / middleware solutions such as JAUS and ROS 1/ ROS 2, where the latter two are the de facto standard in civilian robotics research. The investigation will also include military standards such as BML, IOP, and other relevant NATO STANAGs as well as applicable civilian standards. The group will investigate how a group of UGVs can be controlled, from tele-operated control to multi-robot collaboration through mission-oriented orders. This will include centralized as well as decentralized control. Another aspect is how to team unmanned assets with manned units, and how the unmanned units should be controlled most efficiently. Additionally, the group will examine how the UGVs can contribute to the situational awareness with regards to mobility. This may include sharing maps, sensor data, and tactical information. All these challenges require the single UGV and the system of UGVs to have a unified architecture. Discussing possible characteristics of this architecture may also be a part of the group’s work. The group will select a subset of the possible solutions and try to implement them. The resulting capability concept demonstrator will be tested in field experiments where the solutions are evaluated. After the experiments a final report will be written. This will include an account of the work done in the group and the description of the experiments. Limitations and proposed changes or enhancements of the standards will also be reported.

Period	6 Nov 2023 → 6 Nov 2026
Degree of Recognition	International