WP4-36

Autonomous Decision Making in Critical Situations

ID	WP4-36
Contributor	IMCS
Levels	Function
Require	drone with on-board computer with ROS interface for Control
Provide	TBC
Input	from drone - Autopilot, GPS, Remote Control
Output	enumeration for Action if Critical Situation detected
C4D building block	TBC
TRL	6

Motivation

• Monitoring of Critical Situations and actions on them must be safe for fully autonomous use, without a human in the loop.
• The above is not the case with most of today’s off-the-shelf drone platforms:
  • Although typically drones do monitor some Critical Situations, such monitoring and reactions are designed for cases, where external remote control is available.
  • As an example, on detecting a Critical Situation “Remote Control lost”, typically off-the-shelf drones implement reactions Land, Return Home, and Hover. Neither of these options allow to productively continue the mission, which is unacceptable for applications requiring fully autonomous operation.
• The component WP4-36 implements the capability of fully autonomous decision making and execution in situations, where remote control is not available.

Overview

• WP4-36 augments drone’s native critical situation handling, thus adding the ability to safely operate in a fully autonomous mode.
• WP4-36 supports operation in the “Human In the Loop” mode, with a Remote Control
• WP4-36 implements:
  • additional Critical Situation Monitors
  • additional Actions on Critical Situations
  • additional configuration mechanism supporting two operation profiles:
    • for externally controlled flight with the Remote Control active
    • for autonomous flight without Remote Control
• WP4-36 enables adaptation of existing drone equipment to changing requirements. Enhancements are easily deployable by means of a software update
• Running as a dedicated ROS node.

Computer Vision Component in the application scenario

Testing

• Drone with Autopilot, Sensors, and Cameras
• Remote Control with a computer running GUI and manual pilot application
• Onboard computer on the drone, running Drone control API
• Simulation computer running “DJI Assistant” application, used for fault injection
• Simulation computer with Matlab Simulink environment, running Mission Control and WP4 components
• Simulation computer with Matlab Simulink environment, running Mission scenario component

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