Applications of Digital Video and Synthetic Environments to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The current Army Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system has two problems, 1) it does not provide for the direct distribution of live UAV video throughout command posts across their local area networks, and 2) it lacks an automated trainer. To solve the video distribution problem, I studied the UAV system, video compression techniques, and local area network protocols to develop the video distribution model. The approach taken for developing the simulator included researching the operational characteristics of the UAV system and studying the creation of synthetic environments. This work develops an architecture for extending the distribution of live UAV video inside the command post using a local area network. It recommends distributing full-motion UAV video over an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) local area network using the motion Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) compression technique. Additionally, I created an interactive, UAV Simulator using the IRIS Performer applications program interface and C++. The simulator is implemented using two, networked workstations which replicate the functions of the air vehicle and mission payload operators. The workstations communicate across a local area network using the Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) protocol.