The goal of Prospective Research Programme Action is to investigate the available means and design future technologies in order to upgrade the performance of the localization function within a network of heterogeneous autonomous vehicles.
Heterogeneousness concerns the types of vehicles that are considered (UAVs - especially VTOL UAVs, UGVs, USVs, AUVs); the objects to be localized are friends, foes or targets, within a dangerous, partially unknown, dynamic environment.
During the project, the general question of mission preparation and mission management will be focused on, within a multi-agent cooperation context and based on networked cooperative decision architectures. The main scientific subjects involved are data fusion, decision making including planning and supervision.
The technologies that will be designed will be assessed thanks to demonstrations based on a set of scenarios that are representative of the operational context.

The successive studies based on the different scenarios will allow the localization function to be dealt with in a more and more global way, through four themes of growing complexity:

• Theme 1: cooperation within a two-vehicle team;
• Theme 2: information sharing among three vehicles;
• Theme 3: coordination of two heterogeneous teams;
• Theme 4: flotilla management.

The themes will be illustrated on six scenarios:

• Scenario I (theme 1): 1 UAV + 1 UGV;
• Scenario II (theme 1): 1 UAV + 1 AUV;
• Scenario III (theme 2): 1 UAV + 2 UGVs;
• Scenario IV (theme 2): 1 UAV + 1 AUV + 1 USV;
• Scenario V (theme 3): 2 UAVs + 2 UGVs;
• Scenario VI (theme 4): UAV and UGV flotilla.

The themes involve the following scientific subjects:

• Data fusion;
• Decison making: planning and supervision.

Contact:

PEA Action is funded by DGA (Délégation Générale pour l'Armement, French Defence procurement agency); the project owner is the MI expertise centre (Maîtrise de l'Information). As this programme is multidisciplinary, other DGA expertise centres are involved in the supervision of the work: Bourges and Angers expertise centres from TT (Techniques Terrestres) and Toulon and Brest expertise centres from TN (Techniques Navales).

ONERA - DCSD Département Commande des Systèmes et Dynamique du Vol
Centre de Toulouse
BP 74025 - 2, avenue Edouard-Belin
F-31055 TOULOUSE Cedex 4

E-mail: FirstName.SurName@onera.fr

Magali BARBIER - Paul CHAVENT - Vincent FUERTES - Jean-François GABARD - Thibault GATEAU - Nicolas LASSABE - Charles LESIRE - Roger MAMPEY - Alain PIQUEREAU - Pascal SCHMIDT - Florent TEICHTEIL - Catherine TESSIER - Yoko WATANABE

ONERA - DTIM Département Traitement de l'Information et Modélisation
BP 72 - 29, avenue de la Division Leclerc
F-92322 CHATILLON Cedex

E-mail: FirstName.SurName@onera.fr

Guy LE BESNERAIS - Benjamin PANNETIER - Martial SANFOURCHE

LAAS/CNRS Laboratoire d'Architecture et d'Analyse des Systèmes
7, avenue du Colonel Roche
F-31077 Toulouse Cedex 4

E-mail: FirstName.SurName@laas.fr

Félix INGRAND - Simon LACROIX