The Autonomy Kit provides multiple levels of autonomous control in a wide range of operating environments – from cluttered off-road terrain to urban roads, including GPS-denied areas. The kit is customizable and allows for autonomous control of mission payloads and mission-specific behaviors.
Scalable Autonomy
Balance Capabilities, Operator Workload, & Costs
The AutonoNav software architecture is scalable and flexible; multiple levels of autonomy allow the tradeoff between reduced operator workload and system cost to be balanced.
Easy to Use
Intuitive Operator Controls
The mission planning interface puts a focus on operator ease-of-use with intuitive mission planning, real-time mission monitoring and rerouting, and integration with the WaySight handheld OCU.
Customizable Behaviors
Custom, Mission-Specific Capabilities
Integration of mission-specific behaviors - including autonomous payload control, CONOPS, and Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) - provides custom capabilities to meet Warfighter needs.
On-Road & Off-Road Autonomy
From City Streets to Rugged Terrain
The AutonoNav enables autonomous navigation in dynamic on-road environments and cluttered off-road terrain. On-road operation can take place in urban networks while autonomously interacting with traffic and following rules-of-the-road. Off-road capabilities enable missions ranging from dismounted squad support, distributed resupply, and CASEVAC to highly specialized operations.
The Mission Manager performs mission level route planning while maintaining overall awareness of mission progress and enabling on-the-go rerouting. The Mission Manager divides the mission into a set of operator defined mission tasks that Behaviors will accomplish.
Perception detects and classifies static and dynamic objects, and provides terrain mapping and estimates of lane and corridor boundaries. Perception interfaces with a variety of COTS sensors including LIDAR, radar, and vision.
Behaviors receives tasks defined by the Mission Manager, and inputs from Perception and Health Monitor to continuously select the most appropriate actions. These actions consist of discrete behaviors of the vehicle and payloads, including encoded rules-of-the-road, CONOPS, and TTPs such as traffic queuing, squad-following and comms-loss or rally procedures.
Localization estimates and reports vehicle position, attitude, and velocity, fusing inputs from a survey-grade GPS, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), and vehicle odometry. This module is capable of GPS denied operation for extended distances.
The Motion Planner handles local path planning and obstacle avoidance given inputs from the Perception module and local target points defined by the Behaviors module. The Motion Planner produces desired driving paths and passes commands to the ByWire.
The Health Monitor collects and reports overall system state from the other AutonoNav software modules as well as the ByWire, Tele-Op Kit, and OCU. By commanding the vehicle to pause or reduce speed, the Health Monitor can safely allow continued operation if the system encounters damage.
