# Situational Awareness and Problems of Its Formation in the Tasks of UAV Behavior Control
###### Abstract  
Situational awareness formation is one of the most critical elements in solving the problem of UAV behavior control. It aims to provide information support for UAV behavior control according to its objectives and tasks to be completed. We consider the UAV to be a type of controlled dynamic system. The article shows the place of UAVs in the hierarchy of dynamic systems. We introduce the concepts of UAV behavior and activity and formulate requirements for algorithms for controlling UAV behavior. We propose the concept of situational awareness as applied to the problem of behavior control of highly autonomous UAVs (HA-UAVs) and analyze the levels and types of this situational awareness. We show the specifics of situational awareness formation for UAVs and analyze its differences from situational awareness for manned aviation and remotely piloted UAVs. We propose the concept of situational awareness as applied to the problem of UAV behavior control and analyze the levels and types of this situational awareness. We highlight and discuss in more detail two crucial elements of situational awareness for HA-UAVs. The first of them is related to the analysis and prediction of the behavior of objects in the vicinity of the HA-UAV. The general considerations involved in solving this problem, including the problem of analyzing the group behavior of such objects, are discussed. As an illustrative example, the solution to the problem of tracking an aircraft maneuvering in the vicinity of a HA-UAV is given. The second element of situational awareness is related to the processing of visual information, which is one of the primary sources of situational awareness formation required for the operation of the HA-UAV control system. As an example here, we consider solving the problem of semantic segmentation of images processed when selecting a landing site for the HA-UAV in unfamiliar terrain. Both of these problems are solved using machine learning methods and tools. In the field of situational awareness for HA-UAVs, there are several problems that need to be solved. We formulate some of these problems and briefly describe them. U 25 October 2021 25 December 20  
objectives and the current situation in which the UAV operates. Hence, it follows that a critical part of the UAV behavior control problem is to obtain an evaluation of the current situation, i.e., to get the information about it that is required to support decision-making processes in the control system. This kind of information will be called _situational awareness_ herein. Situational awareness is one of the most important topics for both manned and unmanned aviation, and for other types of controllable systems. Studies related to the concept of situational awareness in its traditional interpretation represent one of the essential branches of human factor engineering (ergonomics). The purpose of such research is to provide information support for human operator activity as an active element of some controlled system (pilot of an aircraft, driver of a car or other land vehicle, ship driver, etc.). Such information support should be organized in such a way as to ensure effective human operator activity, taking into account the requirements related to the safe operation of the respective control systems. Many significant results have been obtained in this field, which has been actively developed in the last 30-35 years. These results refer to the general theoretical issues of situational awareness formation [4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 12; 13; 14; 15; 16; 17; 18; 19; 20; 21; 22; 23; 24; 25; 26; 27; 28; 29; 30; 31] and the application of relevant ideas and methods for solving problems related to various classes of control systems that include humans in their control loops. Specific classes of such systems include, but are not limited to, aircraft [4; 5; 24; 25; 27; 29; 32; 33; 34; 35; 36; 37; 38; 39; 40; 41; 42; 43; 44; 45; 46; 47; 48; 49; 50; 51], ships [14; 23], and ground vehicles [10; 11; 13; 21; 22].