Military Communications and Information Technology: A Trusted ...

314 Military Communications and Information Technology...
Execution of the guard command is done very similar; the UGV is ordered
again to move to the center of the area and each UAV receives an order to patrol
in one half of the area.
The observe command is performed by moving the UGV to the target position
and let the UAVs orbit around that position.
We also added two emergency buttons. The first is “Emergency Stop” which
cancels all previously given commands and lets all robots stop. The second is “Return
to Base” which gives each robot a “move to base” task. The base must have
been defined previously in the C2LG GUI.
We tested and demonstrated all that functionality on our test side in Wachtberg,
next to the Fraunhofer FKIE. It showed that our approach works. Due to the standardization
of BML and ROS the interaction between the components of the three
different institutes was no problem.
Figure 5. Map returned by the UGV during the reconnaisance mission. White represents free area,
black represents obstacles and gray is undiscovered area. The blue lines are predefined roads
VI. Conclusion and outlook
We presented a system that allows commanding an MRS with BML. Giving
the orders in restricted normal English is an intuitive way but requires complex
intelligent nodes. The BML exchange format makes it possible to develop the intelligent
nodes independent of each other because of the standardization. But BML
does not always allow giving orders at a level of the detail which might be desirable.
Adjusting BML to the special needs of a multi-robot system is one of the work
items for the future. The intelligent nodes often have similar structures and we are
planning to generate them from scripts or rules. This would allow faster integration
of new commands or adjusting behavior to new robots. Reporting position and