Human-UAV Co-operation based on artificial cognition

Abstract

In the future, Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) will be part of both civil and military aviation. This includes co-operative mission accomplishment of manned and unmanned assets with little manpower being available for UAV guidance. So, UAVs need to be able to accomplish tasks with a minimum of human intervention and possibly in co-operation with other UAVs or manned aircraft. This paper presents artificial cognition as approach to co-operative capabilities of UAVs. They are guided by so-called Artificial Cognitive Units (ACUs) being capable of goal-directed behavior on the basis of understanding the current situation. Prototype evaluation results show the capability of suchlike co-operative ACUs to yield human-like rationality and the ability to act as peers in a human-ACU team. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.