# Situational Awareness and Problems of Its Formation in the Tasks of UAV Behavior Control
###### Abstract
The results of such considerations should provide a framework for analyzing the problem of situational awareness as a whole and identifying the required elements of situational awareness and their interaction. In this article, we consider the problem of situational awareness for \"smart\" UAVs in general and develop an approach to solving this problem. When considering the current situation for the UAV, the problem of its estimation contains two parts. The first of them is the evaluation of values for the variables describing the state of the UAV (i.e., the values describing the trajectory and angular motion of the UAV), and the values characterizing the \"health state\" of the UAV. The solution to this problem is related to the use of methods from such scientific and engineering disciplines as state estimation [57; 58] and identification [59; 60; 61; 62; 63; 64; 65; 66], and diagnostics [67; 68; 69; 70; 71]. The second part of the mentioned problem is to identify the so-called background-target environment in which the UAV operates. In this case, under the background-target environment, we understand the set of observed objects, backgrounds, disturbances, and propagation media for signals (electromagnetic, sound, etc.). The task of background-target environment analysis can be solved both in static and dynamic ways. In the static case, this problem can be reduced to the study of revealing and recognizing objects in a specific area of space surrounding the UAV. In a dynamic variant, we are interested in the nature of these objects, and this predicting their behavior, which is required for more effective decision-making by the behavior control system of the UAV. Both of these types of problems have to be solved, as a rule, in the presence of a variety of disturbances of natural and/or artificial origins. The content of this article is mainly related to the second part of the situation assessment problem mentioned above. The solution to this problem should provide source data for the UAV's behavior control system. The purpose of our paper is to give a reasonably general formulation of the situational awareness problem for highly autonomous UAVs, which could serve as a basis for structuring this problem. We use this structuring to outline the directions of further research required to solve the situational awareness problem concerning HA-UAVs. In doing so, we interpret the UAV as a kind of controlled dynamic system. In Section 2, we present a hierarchy of such systems, based on the concepts we introduced in the monograph [72], and show the place of the HA-UAV in this hierarchy. Then we introduce the theory of the behavior and activity of HA-UAVs as controlled dynamic systems, and the theory for controlling their behavior. As an extension of this topic, we formulate the requirements for algorithms for controlling the behavior of HA-UAVs. One of the critical elements of the behavior control problem is the information support of the corresponding formation and decision-making processes, providing the achievement of control goals. This support consists of assessing the current situation and forming the situational awareness required for the HA-UAV behavior control algorithms. In this regard, in Section 3, we propose formulations for the concepts of the situation and situational awareness that take into account the specifics of the HA-UAV and analyze possible approaches to forming elements of situational awareness. Then, in Section 4, we analyze the levels and types of situational awareness concerning the specifics of the HA-UAV. In Section 5, we consider the problem of forming elements of situational awareness for HA-UAVs. There we also discuss examples of situational awareness elements relevant to solving the behavior control problem for highly autonomous UAVs, along with approaches to the formation of these elements. There are several problems to be solved in the area of situational awareness for HA-UAVs. In Section 6, we discuss some of them.