Petter Ögren, FOI
E-mail: petter.ogren@foi.se
This talk will cover two results from the AURES project (Autonomous UGV-systems for REconnaissance and Surveillance) which is part of the FMV-funded TAIS program (Technologies of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems).
The first result describes how feedback linearization can be used to enhance the user interface for teleoperation of tracked UGVs. By introducing an intermediate control layer, a user interface that is very similar to so-called first person shooter (FPS) computer games, e.g. Doom and Half Life, can be created. The advantages of such interfaces is that they are intuitive, and that literally millions of potential future UGV-operators already have spent hundreds of hours training with them. The control mode gives the user direct control of the position and orientation of the on-board camera, while the actual orientation of the vehicle is abstracted away using feedback linearization.
The second result deals with choosing positions for a group of UGVs such that the combined camera images can be used to carry out a given surveillance task. Two such tasks are considered. The first is to monitor all walls of a given set of buildings, while satisfying camera constraints in terms of range, field of view and resolution. The second task is to create a line-of-sight perimeter around a given set of buildings to keep track of anyone entering or leaving the area.