We describe a Multi-Agent System (MAS) for controlling teams of uninhabited air vehicles (UAVs) in the context of a larger system that has been used to evaluate potential concepts of use and technologies. The approach is one of a decision-making partnership between a human operator and an intelligent uninhabited capability. The MAS controls the UAVs and selforganises to achieve the tasks set by the operator with interaction via a variable autonomy interface. We describe how the agents are integrated with the rest of the system and present a number of system integration issues that have arisen. The overall system has been evaluated in a number of human-in-the-loop trials within a detailed synthetic environment. Categories and Subject Descriptors I.2.11 [Artificial Intelligence]: Distributed Artificial Intelligence – multi-agent systems. I.2.9 [Artificial Intelligence]: Robotics – autonomous vehicles, operator interfaces. I.2.8 [Artificial Intelligence]: Problem Solving, Control Met...
Jeremy W. Baxter, Graham S. Horn