Defence R&D Canada's autonomous intelligent systems program

The Defence Research and Development Canada's (DRDC has been given strategic direction to pursue research to increase the independence and effectiveness of military vehicles and systems. This has led to the creation of the Autonomous Intelligent Systems (AIS) program and is notionally divide into air, land and marine vehicle systems as well as command, control and decision support systems. This paper presents an overarching description of AIS research issues, challenges and directions as well as a nominal path that vehicle intelligence will take. The AIS program requires a very close coordination between research and implementation on real vehicles. This paper briefly discusses the symbiotic relationship between intelligence algorithms and implementation mechanisms. Also presented are representative work from two vehicle specific research program programs. Work from the Autonomous Air Systems program discusses the development of effective cooperate control for multiple air vehicle. The Autonomous Land Systems program discusses its developments in platform and ground vehicle intelligence.