# Situational Awareness and Problems of Its Formation in the Tasks of UAV Behavior Control
## 6 Areas of Further Research on Situational Awareness for Highly Autonomous UAVs  
Consideration of the situational awareness problem for the HA-UAV shows that there are still a number of topics that need to be considered. The problem of situational awareness formation can be solved in different ways. Which one to choose for a particular type of HA-UAV depends on many factors. Among these factors are the goals of using the HA-UAV, the variety of tasks it solves, and the limitations on available resources when forming elements of situational awareness. In order to compare possible variants of situational awareness formation and then choose the one that satisfies the presented conditions, it is necessary to quantify these variants. In other words, it is essential to formulate a set of criteria (metrics) that allow evaluating the accuracy and completeness of situational awareness. In addition, in terms of these criteria, it is necessary to estimate the level of situational awareness required from the point of view of HA-UAV behavior control objectives. The extension of this problem is to optimize the level of situational awareness needed from the point of view of HA-UAV behavior control objectives. As always, the critical element in optimization tasks is the optimization criterion (or set of criteria). As applied to UAVs, the choice of the type of optimization criteria for the level of situational awareness is determined, first of all, by the goals of flight operations realized by UAVs. In addition, these criteria may set some complementary conditions. One more variant of the statement of an optimization problem for situational awareness consists of maximization of a level of situational awareness for the given amount of computing resources, which can be spent to form situational awareness. In particular, this problem can be posed as a search for the level of situational awareness minimally sufficient to satisfy the UAV behavior control objectives. Solving such a problem will make it possible to minimize the expenditure of resources on situational awareness formation. As it is well known, all control processes are purposeful. Accordingly, the processes of information support for UAV behavior control, i.e., the formation processes of situational awareness, will also be purposeful. For this reason, it is necessary to investigate the mechanisms of goal setting, i.e., the tools for adjusting the existing goals and forming new goals that guide the operation of the UAV behavior control system. To reduce the amount of computation required to create elements of situational awareness, attention management and attention allocation mechanisms play essential roles according to the goals of the flight operation implemented by the UAV. These mechanisms should make it possible to reallocate available resources to provide, as fully as possible, information support for critical actions in the current situation. This requirement means that we can consider the mechanism of goal adjustment and goal-setting combined with the mechanism of attention management as a tool for the dynamic formation of situational awareness elements. When a flight operation is performed not by an individual UAV but by a group of UAVs, there is a problem of situational awareness formation both for individual UAVs and for groups of UAVs, solving a common task. At the same time, situational awareness of individual UAVs included in the grouping should be formed based on the goals for individual UAVs, which are subgoals of the general goal of the flight operation for the grouping as a whole. For the grouping as a whole, situational awareness is formed based on the goals of the flight operation performed by the grouping. The problem of sensor fusion, i.e., the problem of forming elements of situational awareness and situational awareness as a whole based on data coming from different sources, is of particular importance here. For individual UAVs, it could be computer vision, radar, infrared cameras, etc.