Unmanned systems technologies in contested urban environments

Recent military research has focused on how militaries can effectively employ technology in mega-cities deemed Contested Urban Environments (CUE). This paper looks at aspects of the CUE environment and discusses how autonomous systems may be used to gain a tactical advantage. Recent experiments at The Technical Cooperation Program (TTCP) CUE 18 experiment, held in Montreal, looked at the use of autonomous systems, among other technologies, in roles such as surveillance, mapping, sensor deployment, etc. A key focus of the work was to improve the situational awareness of the soldiers at the tactical edge. Employment and delivery of unmanned assets at the tactical edge demands robustness to communication and GPS loss, ease of use, and full-scale integration with larger command and control structures to ensure maximum effectiveness of the assets. Several systems were deployed at the CUE Montreal trial to test these environmental stressors. For instance, UAVs carrying vision and lidar-based sensors were used to produce detail 3D maps of the environment without relying on GPS information. A novel concept for deploying Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) from a UAV was developed and used to deploy the sensors to strategic locations. Data from the unmanned vehicles and the UGS were shared through the use of the Open Standards for Unattended Sensors (OSUS) and accessible to both the Canadian and allied Common Operating Picture (COP) being tested at the trial. The remainder of this paper discusses the results of the CUE Montreal experimentation and uses the results to suggest future directions of autonomous research in CUE environments.