Apr 9 2014
Neya Systems' Mission Planning and Management System (MPMS) has been in development for the past three years and is tailored towards providing heterogeneous platform behavior orchestration, while allowing for combined off-line and tactical mission management. Originally developed with unmanned ground vehicles in mind, MPMS has been extended to support unmanned aerial systems and joint operations between the two.
VERTI User Interface. (PRNewsFoto/Neya Systems LLC)
Under this Phase III SBIR, Neya will work with Lockheed Martin to integrate VERTI, which is an extension of MPMS developed under an Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) SBIR to focus on casualty evacuation and cargo resupply missions.
VERTI allows for pre-mission planning using an interface that is familiar to mission planners who are already familiar with Air Tasking Orders and existing planning tactics, techniques, and procedures. The pre-mission planning phase is intended to allow an in-field medic or other soldier to rapidly call up a desired mission (e.g. Cargo Resupply), and populate mission parameters such as drop-off location, landing zone conditions, and any flight restrictions.
VERTI moves away from traditional "functional" user interfaces, which focus on direct control of specific payloads, platforms, and sensors. Instead, VERTI presents a context-aware, mission-specific interface that walks the user through the steps required for a particular mission, while allowing him to make changes to critical parameters as the tactical situation changes in real time.
"We are very happy to be partnered with Lockheed on this effort, and feel that the K-MAX, with its successful history of providing autonomous cargo delivery support in Afghanistan, is the ideal demonstrator platform for our new C2 capability," said Dr. Parag Batavia, president of Neya Systems.
Demonstrating VERTI on K-MAX is a large step towards proving out the capabilities and readiness of this technology.
"The unmanned K-MAX is a robust platform performing daily resupply operations in Afghanistan," says Dr. Jeffrey Poulin, Engineering Fellow at Lockheed Martin. "The optionally piloted vehicle, with an open architecture on-board autonomy suite, provides a framework for integrating and maturing next-generation control systems and technologies to rapidly deploy capability in a cost-efficient manner."
About Neya Systems LLC
Neya Systems is one of the leading developers of advanced unmanned systems technologies in the United States. Neya works with defense, homeland security, and commercial customers to deliver novel solutions to some of the hardest problems related to autonomy, computer vision, and general unmanned systems development and deployment. Both government- and commercial-sector engineering managers consistently turn to Neya's team when seeking expertise related to perception in difficult visual conditions.