Smarter UAVs Mean More UAVs in War Zones

 

The Pentagon is intent on continually growing its numbers of remotely piloted, unmanned aircraft in war zones. But with each unmanned aerial device requiring two pilots, how will the military deal with the coming manpower crunch?

The answer, of course, is to build a smarter UAV.

Today, each UAV needs a two-person team: one soldier to fly it and another to operate its sensors for intelligence and surveillance purposes. But the military is having trouble keeping up with all the recruiting and training that this advanced technology requires.

That's why Air Force and Wright State University researchers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a key UAV hub, are researching ways to automate many of the vital functions of a UAV. Enabling the UAV to fly itself, for example, would allow a single operator to oversee multiple craft at once. And he or she would be better able to examine objects of interest seen in video feeds from the aircraft’s cameras.

The results can support other research designed to help operators identify objects of interest from hours of video-feed data, the researchers said--just like smart cameras that use intelligent search.