Ornella Schavemaker

Programming what we don’t own, Operating what we don’t understand: Simulation for Autonomous Ground Vehicles

Bio.
She is an innovative leader at the forefront of simulation, robotics, and autonomous systems, currently working within the Royal Netherlands Army’s innovation department. With a background spanning industrial automation, applied research and academia, she brings a unique perspective to advancing simulation, robotics, and autonomous systems. Her work focuses on developing innovative solutions for unmanned systems and, in order to achieve this, fostering collaboration between military experts, industry, and academia to drive cutting-edge solutions. Passionate about continuous learning, she actively contributes to national and international developments in modeling & simulation and XR technologies, robotics, and autonomous systems.”

Abstract.

Military simulation is usually associated with training and education. This presentation shows a different use: developing unmanned and autonomous ground vehicles (UGV) that the Royal Netherlands Army does not have yet. We address three problems. First, autonomy software development must start before the hardware is available. Second, existing doctrine and concepts of operations assume human-operated vehicles and weapons, so no one yet knows how to employ autonomous systems effectively. Third, operators of these systems need maximum situational awareness without information overload. We propose a simulation framework that answers all three: concurrent engineering where software is developed on simulated hardware (Digital Twin), autonomous missions are played out to discover new concepts of operations, and human-machine interfaces are tested with operators before they are fixed. The framework also gives acquisition decision-makers evidence before hardware is procured.