AAI's New Technologies Support NATO Interoperability Standards for Unmanned Air and Ground Vehicles

At Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, AAI Corporation, an operating unit of Textron Systems, a Textron Inc. company, has successfully demonstrated several new technologies for command-and-control of unmanned air and ground vehicles.

 

To support NATO interoperability standard, these technologies were designed and developed in conjunction with the U.S. Navy Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City and the U.S. Army’s unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) Program Office.

 

They include the integration of QinetiQ (News - Alert) North America’s TALON robot and command-and-control capabilities of the GCS were expanded further. Looking to support the TALON robot, AAI and QinetiQ North America successfully demonstrated a STANAG 4586-to-JAUS (Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems) translator. Now, they can also transmit video from Talon to AAI’s One System Remote Video Terminal (OSRVT).

 

This new GCS is compliant with NATO standardization agreement (STANAG) 4586 and translates information from unmanned vehicles into standardized message formats that can be shared with other systems.

 

Users also have seamless interoperability since information can be transferred back into vehicle-specific messaging formats and whether on ground, sea or air platform, a separate vehicle-specific module (VSM) provides vehicle-unique control messages to the unmanned system being operated.

 

To integrate OSRVT capabilities into the TALON’s controller, AAI currently is working with QinetiQ North America’s Technology solutions Group in Waltham, Mass. The TALON’s controller is expected to provide TALON operators even greater situational awareness from data provided by the UAS overhead.

 

“The objective of NATO STANAG 4586 is to create interoperability among different unmanned systems utilized by the alliance’s military forces,” says AAI’s Vice President of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Steven Reid.

 

“Because of AAI’s longstanding expertise in GCS technologies, we are embracing this objective to create total GCS interoperability across various types of unmanned platforms. This will keep American and allied warfighters safe, as well as increase their mission success rate.”