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.

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

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