Intelligent Adaptive Autonomous Systems: Essential Technologies and Applications

自主和无人驾驶车辆（AUV）是在海洋，地面，空中和地球大气层之外运行的系统。AUV可以去传统车辆不能去的地方，做传统车辆不能做的事情，或者去对人类不安全的地方。AUV在民用、军事和安全领域有很多潜在的应用，例如国防巡逻任务、农业活动、森林火灾监测和控制、网格监测、边界控制、监视、搜索和救援。AUV对加拿大有巨大的潜在利益，原因有很多;其中许多与我们大片无人居住的土地、世界上最大的森林面积和世界上最长的国际边界有关。虽然无人驾驶汽车在过去十年中取得了巨大的进步，但仍有许多问题没有得到解决。在复杂、动态和交互式环境中运行的自治系统需要能够及时概括不可预测的情况和原因的人工智能。与单个AUV相比，多AUV系统（相同或不同类型）在各种复杂的团队任务中更有效，因为它们具有固有的优势，包括在动态环境中增加的适应性，鲁棒性和灵活性，使命效率，较低的成本和成功的概率。然而，多个自动驾驶车辆的有效协作在动力学、控制、导航、规划、决策等方面提出了许多挑战。在某些应用中，自动驾驶系统需要在决策、规划和感知方面达到人类水平的可靠性，而目前的检测和分割精度在困难条件下还不够。如果我们能够克服这些挑战，自主系统将对我们的生活产生巨大的有益影响。这个拟议的发现项目将专注于智能自适应自主系统及其应用的几项关键技术的开发，例如（i）协同运输;和（ii）自动驾驶。这些技术的成功开发将进一步有助于保持加拿大作为自主系统领域领先研究国的地位，此外，还将转化为参与这些领域的加拿大公司的经济利益。该项目对于在加拿大发展下一阶段自主系统研发所需的专业知识和人才也很重要。

Autonomous and Unmanned Vehicles (AUVs) are systems that operate in the sea, across the ground, in the air and beyond Earth's atmosphere. AUVs can go places and do things traditional vehicles cannot, or where it is unsafe for humans. The AUVs have a lot of potential applications in civilian, military and security areas, for example defense patrol duties, agricultural activities, forest fire monitoring and control, grid monitoring, boarder control, surveillance, search and rescue. AUVs have great potential benefits to Canada for numerous reasons; many of which are connected with our large uninhabited land, the largest area of forests in the world, and the longest international border in the world. While the field of autonomous unmanned vehicles has made tremendous progress over the last decade, many questions remain unanswered. Autonomous systems that operate in complex, dynamic, and interactive environments require artificial intelligence that generalizes to unpredictable situations and reasons in a timely manner. Compared to single AUV, systems with multiple AUVs (same or of different types) are more effective in various complicated team tasks due to their inherent advantages, including increased adaptability, robustness, and flexibility in a dynamic environment, mission efficiency, lower cost, and probability of success. However, effective cooperation of multiple autonomous vehicles poses many challenges in dynamics, control, navigation, planning, decision-making, etc. In some applications, autonomous systems need to reach human-level reliability in decision-making, planning, and perception, and current detection and segmentation accuracies do not yet suffice in difficult conditions. If we can overcome these challenges, autonomous systems will have a tremendously beneficial impact on our lives. This proposed Discovery Project will focus on the development of several essential technologies for the Intelligent Adaptive Autonomous Systems and their applications such as (i) collaborative transportation; and (ii) autonomous driving. The successful development of these technologies will further contribute to maintaining Canada's status as a leading research country in the area of autonomous systems, and will, in addition, translate into monetary benefits for the Canadian companies who participate in these areas. This project is also important for developing expertise and talent within Canada needed for the next phases of research and development of autonomous systems.