ABSTRACT

In the 20th Century, navigation in three dimensions was largely the province of pilots . With ubiquitous deployment of Unmanned Aerial Systems, thousands of people who have not been selected or trained are now operating aircraft, developing intelligence based on the flight of these vehicles and most importantly, depending on that information to be accurate . Ironically, the ease of operation that robotics enables with UAS systems means that operators require little experience to get them in the air. However, the hours and years of flight training bring experience to pilots that remote UAS operators may not have. Fmiher, UAS operators must mentally proj ect themselves into the reference frame afforded by the UAS . Such projection is a difficult task. In this paper we describe the background on mental reference frames in three dimensions that will be critical for UAS operations .