Towards an Open, Distributed Software Architecture for UxS Operations - "It's difficult to work in groups when you're omnipotent," - Q Star Trek: The Next Generation:: Deja Q (1990)

Abstract

To address the growing need to evaluate, test, and certify an ever expanding ecosystem of UxS platforms in preparation of cultural integration, NASA Langley Research Center's Autonomy Incubator (AI) has taken on the challenge of developing a software framework in which UxS platforms developed by third parties can be integrated into a single system which provides evaluation and testing, mission planning and operation, and out-of-the-box autonomy and data fusion capabilities. This software framework, named AEON (Autonomous Entity Operations Network), has two main goals. The first goal is the development of a crossplatform, extensible, onboard software system that provides autonomy at the mission execution and course-planning level, a highly configurable data fusion framework sensitive to the platform's available sensor hardware, and plug-and-play compatibility with a wide array of computer systems, sensors, software, and controls hardware. The second goal is the development of a ground control system that acts as a test-bed for integration of the proposed heterogeneous fleet, and allows for complex mission planning, tracking, and debugging capabilities. The ground control system should also be highly extensible and allow plug-andplay interoperability with third party software systems. In order to achieve these goals, this paper proposes an open, distributed software architecture which utilizes at its core the Data Distribution Service (DDS) standards, established by the Object Management Group (OMG), for inter-process communication and data flow. The design decisions proposed herein leverage the advantages of existing robotics software architectures and the DDS standards to develop software that is scalable, high-performance, fault tolerant, modular, and readily interoperable with external platforms and software. Nomenclature and Acronyms ROS = Robot Operating System DDS = Data Distribution Service P2P = Peer-to-Peer OMG = Object Management Group RPC = Remote Procedure Call UxS = Unmanned x System [x = aerial, underwater, surface, ground, etc.]

Reinforcement Learning with Autonomous Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Cluttered Environments - "After all these years among humans, you still haven't learned to smile."

“…The Autonomy Incubator at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is developing technologies and capabilities focused on autonomous missions using sUAVs [5][6][7][8][9][10] . In this report, we implement and assess the performance of a recently proposed method for obstacle avoidance in cluttered environments using a monocular forward-facing camera 11 .…”