As unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) are being widely utilized in military

and civil applications, concerns are growing about mission safety and how

to integrate dierent phases of mission design. One important barrier to a coste

ective and timely safety certication process for UAVs is the lack of a systematic

approach for bridging the gap between understanding high-level commander/pilot

intent and implementation of intent through low-level UAV behaviors. In this thesis

we demonstrate an entire systems design process for a representative UAV mission,

beginning from an operational concept and requirements and ending with a simulation

framework for segments of the mission design, such as path planning and

decision making in collision avoidance.

In this thesis, we divided this complex system into sub-systems; path planning,

collision detection and collision avoidance. We then developed software modules for

each sub-system