Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Applied Decision Sciences

 

Special Issue on: "Decision Support Systems for Unmanned Vehicles"

Guest Editors:
Dr. Brian S. Bourgeois, Naval Research Laboratory, USA
Dr. Timothy Busch, Air Force Research Laboratory, USA

The growing use of autonomous air, surface, ground and underwater systems is continually demonstrating new military and commercial possibilities and applications. The technology for, and capabilities of, unmanned vehicles (UVs) have leapt dramatically ahead in the past two decades, going from concept to operational systems. However, relatively little progress has been seen in the development of decision support systems that help the operators prioritise, plan, schedule and adapt these vehicles for a wide variety of functions and environments.

Typical mission planning systems do little more than show data to us, as opposed to displaying the impact of that data on a proposed mission or further to provide a systematic framework for the exploration, creation and evaluation of potential mission plans that meet specified objectives. Unmanned vehicles, particularly those with high levels of autonomy inferring infrequent human control, are unique in that much more planning is needed ahead of time than for manned missions. These vehicles have neither the sensors nor the decision making sophistication required to assess the environment and its impact on the mission, so many of the eventualities must be planned for prior to a mission using the best knowledge available.

Today, this task is typically managed in an ad-hoc fashion with little support from computers tailored to provide analytical analysis, and often requires significant expertise and manpower to successfully field these systems. To make the deployment of UVs more manageable and less expensive, advances need to be made in decision support software systems that can provide a consistent and systematic approach to the analysis of the myriad of considerations for the generation of plans to meet stated objective and subjective mission goals.

The objective of this call for papers is to establish an initial baseline on the state of the art of decision support systems for unmanned vehicles that will allow the community to chart a clear course forward.

Subject Coverage
This special issue is a forum for exchange of research findings, analysis, information, and knowledge in areas which include but are not limited to:

• Analysis, design, development and implementation of decision support systems for UVs
• Fielded UV decision support systems
• Common UV command and control system design that will enable the application of generalised decision support systems
• Approaches to the reduction of the UV mission planning state space to a manageable size in which traditional path planning approaches can then be used to find 'optimal' solutions
• Dynamic mission planning and execution
• Mixed initiative methods and approaches in human-machine decision making

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

Important Dates

Deadline for paper submission: 31 August, 2009 (extended)

Notification of acceptance: 25 September, 2009

Final version of paper: 15 January, 2010