Unmanned vehicles

One of the main tasks of the ACSYS Arctic sea ice program is to establish the climatology of ice thickness and ice velocity. Data about this will be supplied by the WCRP Arctic Ice Thickness Project, the International Arctic Buoy Program, sonar profiling from naval submarines and unmanned vehicles, airborne oceanographic lidar, and polar satellites carrying appropriate instruments. 

Foch R. 1998. Micro Unmanned Vehicles. Presentation at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Meeting on Bio-surveillance Providing Detection in the New Millenium. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, February 11. 

Shephard Press. 2000. Shephard s Unmanned Vehicle Systems Handbook 2001. Bucks, England The Shephard Press. 

Small SOFC systems in the 10-500 W power range operating on hydrocarbon fuels have been considered and developed for portable applications. Examples of portable apphcations are battery charging, remote power, and low-level auxiliary power [50, 51]. Portable SOFC systems are particularly suitable for tactical military applications (e.g., soldier power and unmanned vehicle power) due to its potential for operation on logistics fuels such as JP-8 [52]. 

Many factors are contributing to the fuel cell push in the automotive market. The availability of fossil fuels is limited, and due to this, an inevitable price increase will occur. In addition, legislation is becoming stricter about controlling environmental emissions in many countries all over the world. One of the new pieces of legislation that will help introduce the fuel cell automobile market in the United States is the Californian zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, which requires that a certain number of vehicles be sold annually in California. Fuel cell vehicles also have the ability to be more fuel efficient than vehicles powered by other fuels. This power technology allows a new range of power use in small two-wheeled and four-wheeled vehicles, boats, scooters, unmanned vehicles, and other utility vehicles [30-34],... 

Boussemart, Y, and M.L. Cummings. 2008. Behavioral Recognition and Prediction of an Operator Supervising Multiple Heterogeneous Unmanned Vehicles. Presented at Humans Operating Unmanned Systems, Brest, France, September 3-4, 2008. Available online at http //web.mit. edu/aeroastro/labs/halab/papers/boussemart%20-%20humous08-vl.3-final.p(. ... 

Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), http //www.auvsi.org/ AUVSI/AUVSI/Home/ (accessed July 20, 2010). This is a society of individuals and companies involved in the development and promotion of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The Web site has news and useful links for those in the field. 

Self-contained, man-portable Al-air alkaline batteries are widely used in battlefield applications and remote military locations. The battery units initially come with dry alkali contained in the cells, and water can be added when electrical power is desired. The modules can provide temporary electrical power for mobile shelters, command and control communications centers, and field medical facilities. The man-portable Al-air batteries can act as power supplies for unmanned vehicles. Specific details on the components used in the self-contained, man-portable Al-air battery are shown in Figure 6.3. Such a battery was designed and developed about 15 years ago for UAVs and UUWVs and is capable of providing a nominal power of 1.6 kW and a peak power of 4 kW. But, the next generation of such a battery with high-quality alloy is expected to have a peak power exceeding 5 kW. 

Military program managers and field commanders believe that in future military conflicts the UAVs will play a critical role in battlefields and in remote hostile areas. Technical articles published in the June 2009 edition of Military and Aerospace Electronics revealed that defense planners are leaning toward the deployment of unmanned vehicles for underwater reconnaissance, mine detection and destruction, and antisubmarine warfare activities. Furthermore, military commanders are considering the deployment of robot vehicles to undertake reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition, mine and I ED detection, and disposal missions in forward battlefield areas. Some of these vehicles are equipped with deadly Hellfire missiles to destroy hostile targets. 

Autonomous systems such as robots and unmanned vehicles are widely studied and technically feasible. An important bottleneck for their effective deployment in human environments is the safety concerns of both users and certification authorities. Various ad-hoc safety measures have been designed, often focused on particular risks, such as collision. However, if autonomous systems are to be certified, the method needs to be generalized. We propose here a general method to build high-level safety specifications based on hazard analysis. 

Boost-glide vehicles, satellites and similar spacecraft are split into two categories insofar as their auxiliary power requirements are concerned. Unmanned vehicles generally have... 

The developed method for the determination of safe, optimal changes of the ship s course and speed in collision situation at sea, with the presence of other ships and taking into account the static obstacles, constitutes a process of determining a safe, optimal transition path of a moving object in a dynamic environment. The solution of this problem is widely used in robotics and military, for instance in control systems of unmanned vehicles. 

---