M&S-Based Robot Swarms Prototype

Abstract

The future operational environment will be characterized by the employment of Unmanned Autonomous Systems (UAxS) on the battlefield. Contemporary technology is still not mature enough to support this vision and additional development and experiments are necessary. In particular, in the area of the interaction between the human beings and robots, taking into consideration the role of the military Command and Control (C2) Operational Function. The NATO Modelling and Simulation (M&S) Centre of Excellence is going further in this area and in collaboration with Industry and Academia has developed a prototype of a M&S-based platform built on OPEN standard architecture simulating operational environments to support experiments regarding robot swarms operating mainly in the air and ground domains. The platform, codename R2CD2 project, is built on selected constructive simulators and it includes the C2SIM interoperability language extension which enables interoperability between C2 systems and simulated robotic entities. This paper presents the results of the first implementation of a platform prototype suitable to support the standardization and operationalization of the C2SIM language and its extensions to UAxS, through proof of concepts and M&S-based experimentation activities. In conclusion, this paper contains a detailed technical overview of the prototype architecture and its implementation. Further prototype development is concentrated on several operational scenarios, several robot swarms behaviors, missions and tasks according to the robot level of autonomy within the operational vignettes.