SBIR-STTR Award

Distributed Self-Organizing Autonomous Reliable Swarms (DSOARS) for RAIDER (DSOARS-R) will enhance RAIDER with new maritime UAS missions. Its novel algorithms are able to coordinate large teams of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) in high threat environment. It engages the full power of a Cognitive Reasoning Agent (CRA), that uses goal-directed tactical reasoning to ensure that mission objectives are met, Rules of Engagement are enforced, and appropriate responses are made to novel threats and situations. This is coupled with a Swarm Reasoning Agent (SAR)that coordinates large teams of UAS, adapting rapidly to changes in threats, with minimal communication. Large UAS teams are complex systems to design and deploy. These challenges and more have been addressed in SoarTechs DSOARS, a swarm engineering and deployment environment. Based on over 20 years of experience and $15 million in R&D investment, DSOARS provides a solid foundation for the development and deployment of reliable UAS teams. This effort will benefit from DSOARS extensive library of flight tested and verified swarm algorithms for many maritime missions including RF Search and Localization with passive RF sensors. DSOARS-R enhances DSOARS with a Cognitive Reasoning Agent to ensure that mission objectives and constraints are met along with intelligent information management and

Benefit:
DSOARS-R offers a number of significant tactical advantages to the DoD. By coordinating large teams of Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) in communication denied environments, these systems will provide superior situational awareness and effects in high-threat environments. The lower cost and smaller size of UAS platforms means they can be deployed in large numbers and are more expendable so they can operate in high threat environments. Their smaller size makes them more difficult to detect so they can get closer to their objective, and their geographic dispersion and angular diversity enables accurate location estimates with less expensive sensors. These UAS teams extend the range and effectiveness of Maritime forces providing situational awareness at ranges several times farther than their organic sensors. They can find, locate, and track remote targets, direct fires and perform battle damage assessment all while keeping friendly forces well away from the adversary. SoarTech is already in conversation with the major aerospace primes, working on joint projects with them developing aspects of this technology. The technology in DSOARS-R has a number of commercial applications as well including, search and rescue, fire mapping and monitoring, disaster recovery (damage assessment and mapping, locating survivors, and emergency communications), police surveillance for large events, border security, and pipeline inspection. SoarTech has been executing a commercialization strategy for its swarming technology for the last three years, garnering funding to support the development of the core technology and supporting elements (user interface, logistics, and deployment environments) that are necessary for successful deployment in both military and commercial markets.

Keywords:
Autonomy, Autonomy, Emitter localization, Swarming, Artificial Intelligence, surveillance, Swarm Intelligence, Unmanned Aerial Systems

SoarTech proposes DSOARS for RAIDER (DSOARS-R) an integrated sensor resource management software suite for RAIDER. DSOARS-R controls teams of 2-30 UAS in complex, uncertain, high threat, denied environment to collect, share, and fuse sensor data in order to maintain tracks on multiple targets in support of kill chains. It is based on a suite of tested software modules developed and flight tested on multiple programs under DARPA and other agencies over the last 20 years. In Phase 1, we integrated sensor fusion and formation algorithms and in simulation demonstrated their ability to control a team of UAS to autonomously search an area and form optimal geometries for collecting and fusing RF data to accurately locate targets. These technologies form the basis for the RAIDER Units of Portability (UoPs) to be developed and flight tested in this effort. The sensor formation algorithms will be enhanced to include better angular and range diversity to improve location accuracy. The sensor fusion algorithms will be integrated into a general-purpose fusion pipeline that can incorporate additional sensors and sensor fusion algorithms. SoarTech will also integrate our technologies with the Communications Relay, Precision Navigation and Timing (PNT), and Adaptive Information Exchange algorithms being developed by Weather Gage Technologies (WGT) on a companion effort. This will enable DSOARS-R to operate in GPS and communications denied environments. Together these UoPs will provide a complete, robust system for sensor resource management and fusion in denied environments.

Benefit:
Increase functionality of RAIDER architecture to enable teams of up to 30 UAS to autonomously collect and fuse data from multiple sensors to locate and track RF emitters in denied environments. Commercial applications include Search and Rescue and HADR operations.

Keywords:
Artificial Intelligence, Emitter localization, Autonomy, sensor fusion, Unmanned Aerial Systems, Swarm Intelligence, Swarming, surveillance