A vision system for an unmanned, non-lethal weapon

Unmanned weapons remove humans from deadly situations. However some systems, such as unmanned guns, are difficult to control remotely. It is difficult for a soldier to perform the complex tasks of identifying and aiming at specific points on targets from a remote location. This paper describes a computer vision and control system for providing autonomous control of unmanned guns developed at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego (SSC San Diego). The test platform, consisting of a non-lethal gun mounted on a pan-tilt mechanism, can be used as an unattended device or mounted on a robot for mobility. The system operates with a degree of autonomy determined by a remote user that ranges from teleoperated to fully autonomous. The teleoperated mode consists of remote joystick control over all aspects of the weapon, including aiming, arming, and firing. Visual feedback is provided by near-real-time video feeds from bore-site and wide-angle cameras. The semi-autonomous mode provides the user with tracking information overlayed over the real-time video. This provides the user with information on all detected targets being tracked by the vision system. The user uses a mouse to select a target, and the gun automatically aims the gun at the target. Arming and firing is still performed by teleoperation. In fully autonomous mode, all aspects of gun control are performed by the vision system.