T. Paul Hutchinson
Background. There are many types of tests of injury and injury protection in which some proxy for injury is observed in controlled test conditions. This paper considers the implications of a test result for the consequences averaged over the variety of different conditions that occur in the real world. Method. Theoretical analysis of what a test result implies, linked to two examples of applications. The first example is incapacitation from missiles such as bullets or fragments, where averaging is over the body surface. The second is head injury in road accidents, where averaging is over speeds of impact. Results. An equation for average consequences is obtained, based on (a) generalising what happens under one set of conditions to different conditions, (b) transforming what happens in the test to something (a value or a cost) that it is meaningful to average, and (c) using probabilities of different conditions to compute the average consequences. This equation both clarifies earlier work and demonstrates common features of all testing protocols if it is desired to use one set of conditions to represent a great variety of real-world sets of conditions.
Tom Webber, Ian Colwill, David Felix, and Elias Stipidis
Accurate prediction of required energy is essential for efficient deployment of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV). Typical UGV missions do not allow for the replenishment of power resources so mission survivability and overall mission success rate are reliant on accurate power prediction. The live prediction of resources required for a particular mission is therefore beneficial as it could allow for increased mission time and lessen the requirement of over provisioning power resources. Accurate power prediction has particular importance when considering critical missions where failure to complete atomic mission operations may lead to an unsafe situation. This paper presents a new approach to live energy prediction that considers the effects of weather conditions on off-road terrains based upon non-linear polynomial regression for prediction of mission energy consumption using live sensor data. The method is demonstrated and compared to existing methods using a simulation of a typical UGV mission. The mission simulation considers a UGV traversing a variety of terrain types in various weather conditions. The experimental results show a significant improvement in energy prediction compared to existing approaches and demonstrates the success of forward prediction using non-linear terrain/weather/energy consumption models.
Gregor Thomeczek, Ian Colwill, and Elias Stipidis
Network integrity is a critical requirement for battlefield Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs), but the inherent dynamicity and unpredictability of the wireless spectrum, as well as unintentional and intentional interference make wireless communications unreliable. Node mobility is commonly used to improve network Quality of Service (QoS) and restore connectivity in the case of a communication failure, however given that some nodes may be key to realising mission critical capabilities in a group, it is important that a node selection algorithm recognises the impact of the removal of a node from its group. We present Group Capability Integrity Management (GCIM), an application-aware node-selection algorithm which preserves mission critical group capabilities during network repair. We also present Coordinated Node Selection (CNS), a data-model-aware algorithm which enables disjointed node clusters to anticipate the node selection decisions made by other clusters in order to coordinate network repair efforts.
D. Vijay Rao
Abstract: This paper proposes a methodology for the design and development of damage estimation and assessment models based on the weaponeering concepts to estimate and assess the damage caused to ground-based targets from air-borne platforms. These models are used to assess the effectiveness of ground attack weapon systems in an air-land battlefield scenario. A software package called Over Target Requirement Estimation System (OTRES) has been developed based on the proposed methodology which considers a number of factors such as weapons characteristics, target parameters, terrain, target vulnerability, weapon effects, munitions delivery errors, damage criteria, probability of kill, weapon detonation reliability to estimate the damage to a ground target. This estimate is used to generate course of actions and the planner selects one of them by corroborating with other environmental factors, enemy defences and intelligence inputs. The selected course of action (mission plan) is gamed against the perceived threat using the Air Warfare Simulation System (AWSS) test-bed which calculates the attrition to air missions by ground-defence systems deployed to defend a vulnerable area / vulnerable point (VA/VP), and the results are analysed to derive training lessons from the simulator.
Monica Stokes, Kayla Johnson, Justin Fidock and Paul Delfabbro
This study investigates the effect of different levels of accumulated sleep loss on usability of an emulator of digital Command and Control (C2) technology. Three components of usability (efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction) were explored. A sample of 13 military participants performed digital C2 tasks over four sessions. Sleep loss was induced by an additive combination of one night of sleep deprivation followed by two nights of sleep restricted to five hours. Neither effectiveness nor user satisfaction with the technology changed during accumulated sleep loss. When compared with baseline performance, there was a significant decrease in efficiency associated with accumulated sleep loss. There was also a slight recovery in efficiency after the second night of sleep restricted to five hours but levels did not return to baseline. Implications of these findings regarding use of the technology during military operations are discussed.
