The JAUS Technology Center focuses primarily on the implementation of JAUS in unmanned systems. It is intended to assist you on your journey of discovery with JAUS. You can use the information on this site for educational purposes, to bring JAUS to life from the ground up, or for information in seeking a JAUS solution.

Although JAUS is defined by an industry developed standard, interoperability among JAUS systems is defined by coordination between companies that have implemented JAUS. As the JAUS community matures and compliance becomes a stand-alone force, interoperability will be defined by compliance.
 

Existing systems (hardware) that use JAUS are not covered here. Hundreds maybe thousands of JAUS systems are in use worldwide — some obvious, and some not so obvious. JAUS can be found in both commercial and military marketplaces. You can use an Internet search engine to find those systems.

At some point in the future if you are not JAUS, you are silent, cold, and alone.

JAUS History

The need for JAUS was recognized in the early ’90s by Marine Colonel Jeff Kotora (Ret.) to provide interoperability among the unmanned systems for which he was responsible. Jeff hired Robert Wade of U.S. Army AMRDEC. Through significant research and a few epiphanies, Mr. Wade gave birth to JAUGS. The rest, as they say, is history. For more information about JAUS history, refer to SAE Document AIR5664 or the documents section of this web site.

JAUS Facts

These are a few interesting bits of information about JAUS that may or may not be obvious. If you know them then you'll be closer to an insider. This is kind of like those that mispronounce SPAWAR, they are obviously on the outside.

JAUS is an acronym for Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems 

JAUS is pronounced “jaws”

JAUS is a pending SAE standard

JAUS has been in use since approximately 1998

JAUS is scalable from 8-bit CPUs to supercomputers

JAUS is industry scalable

     Backwards compatibility is designed in

     Features are added at the speed of industry

JAUS is adaptable to ALL unmanned platforms in ALL space

JAUS is ready to work today

JAUS will be spoken by C3PO

Why is JAUS important?

The future existence of unmanned systems is assured. One need only read the news to see the success of unmanned systems in use today. As the number of these systems increase, the need for them to be configured and used in ways not previously thought of also increases. JAUS provides a technology- and platform-independent approach for these unmanned systems to communicate and interact that is extensible. This is the core of JAUS. As new domains of usage are defined, JAUS grows. As new applications are identified and implemented, JAUS grows. JAUS is technology agnostic, not dependant on current technology limitations. JAUS provides the common method for communications with unmanned systems created today and tomorrow. We will always need to communicate with our unmanned systems, that is, until they become independent.

DARPA Grand Challenge

JAUS was used on at least two of the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 (GC05) teams — Virgina Tech and the University of Florida. The Florida team passed more than 20 million JAUS messages in real-time at the GC05. The Urban Challenge 2007 (UC07) will have at least six teams that speak JAUS and most likely many more.

JAUS Implementations

There are a number of JAUS implementations on the Web today. The decision of which implementation is right for a particular user or application is up to you. Please browse these references, or use an Internet search engine to find them before we do.

The JAUS Standard

JAUS is currently embodied in the JAUS Reference Architecture (RA) 3.2. These documents were created, vetted, and approved collectively by teams from industry, government, and academics known as the JAUS Working Group (WG). The content of the documents are continuously validated against themselves and new, evolving content through a series of experiments and workshops held multiple times per year at various locations. JAUS has begun migrating to an SAE standard through their Aerospace Standard groupAS-4. The document AIR 5665 will ultimately eclipse the RA standard. This migration will bring new features and capabilities to the JAUS community as well as providing backwards compatibility. The JAUS WG will migrate RA 3.2 simultaneously with the development of the SAE AIR5665 such that around RA 4.0, the first release of SAE AIR5665 will cover almost identically the same content.

By migrating to the SAE, JAUS maintains a future public path along with all the experience, guidance, and oversight that SAE brings from the standards world.

(Translation: This is a really good thing because the standard is driven and maintained by the broad unmanned industry.)

JAUS and Other Unmanned Standards

There are a number of other successful unmanned vehicle standards in existence today. Standards, such as 4D/RCS and STANAG 4586, work very well in their domain. JAUS has learned from the existence of these venerable standards and filled in where they might not be so strong. Leadership by the U.S. Navy has provided a template for the migration of its UUV standards to the JAUS standard. Using this template, the JAUS standards body will align itself with the capabilities of these other unmanned vehicle standards, thus bringing interoperability to all domains.

Assurance

While we have taken every precaution to assure that the information to this site is as accurate as possible, if you find an error or something that is not quite so clear, please let us know and we’ll fix it. corrections@JAUSTECHCENTER.COM.

Additions

JAUS is a well thought out, dynamic method of communicating between elements of unmanned systems. It is as broad as it is deep. There is certainly content that is not presented here. If you have content or would like to see additional content please contact us at content@JAUSTECHCENTER.COM.

Respect

We respect the trademarks of companies and acknowledge that trademarks belong to their respective companies. Additionally, we would like to acknowledge the many significant contributions made to the JAUS standard by the members of the JAUS Working Group. Without them, none of this would have been possible.

Disclaimers

Any opinion or attitude perceived from the content of this site is not reflective of the companies that may be referenced herein. It is our sincere intent to grow the JAUS community as fast as possible by spreading the word. A little humor and ‘tude are assistive in that effort.

Sponsorship

This site is sponsored by Kairos Autonomi, the supplier of the Pronto4™ Retrofit Kit, a universal unmanned vehicle system for ground vehicles.