Integrated Tele-Operation & Mission Control: preliminary experiments with a small USV

Preliminary experiments, carried out with the Charlie USV, of an automatic mission controller able to alternate the execution of autonomous and human tele-operated activities are presented. Simulative and field trials validates the control architecture enabling the management of standard USV missions. In particular, the interconnections and interactions between the basic modules of the control architecture, i.e. mission controller, execution controller, execution level, path planner, and execution monitor, are verified. The definition of a mission control language as well as the configuration of different missions in suitable files is left to further developments.