Thanks to Air Force Research Laborflatory design and development expertise, an important new collaborative simulation capability--one facilitating coopera-tive unmanned air vehicle research--has emerged. The pursuit of a shared simulation capability for independent teams generated the AVTAS (Aerospace Vehicles Technology Assessment and Simulation) UAV toolset.

The new technology levels the playing field for collaborating teams of researchers, who previously contended with simulation capability variances that disrupted or otherwise degraded their common research efforts. In addition to removing disparity, the AVTAS UAV toolset provides a common framework for each team's design implementation and test, while protecting the team's proprietary information.

Using this innovative simulation resource, a research collaborative composed of six separate contractor teams was able to collectively develop, refine, and demonstrate UAV cooperative control algorithms.

The capacity for groups of UAVs to work together is critical to a number of AFRL endeavors, one of which is the Cooperative Operations in Urban Terrain project, also known as COUNTER. Projects such as this often require multiple, and potentially diverse, UAVs to work together, maneuvering in relation to each other, sharing data and performing varied tasks.

Although researchers have made significant progress towards cooperative control as a practical reality, the ability for UAVs to work together does not yet exist at a robust level of fidelity. AFRL is therefore working with partners throughout government, industry, and academia to mature the technology.

While simulations offer a practical, low-cost way to examine the flight dynamics and complex interactions occurring between UAVs, developers have traditionally employed different simulation toolsets to develop, evaluate, and refine their research efforts. Consequently, the lack of a common simulation tool has hindered or prevented information sharing, making the overall task much more difficult.

The development of the AVTAS UAV toolset benefits AFRL and contracting partners alike. Contractor teams are now able to focus research dollars on the development of cooperative control technologies rather than on simulation tools.

This has allowed these research partners to focus their primary efforts on the technology at hand rather than the means for testing the technology. Also, by having a single simulation toolset, contractor partners are able to more rapidly develop and test control algorithms.