JAUS - Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems

Welcome to the website of the Joint Architecture for Unmanned Ground Systems. JAUS is sponsored by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.

JAUS is mandated for use by all of the programs in the Joint Robotics Program (JRP). This JRP initiative is to develop an architecture for the Unmanned Ground Vehicle Domain. JAUS is an upper level design for the interfaces within the domain of Unmanned Ground Vehicles. It is a component based, message-passing architecture that specifies data formats and methods of communication among computing nodes. It defines messages and component behaviors that are independent of technology, computer hardware, and vehicle platforms and isolated from mission.

JAUS uses the Society of Automotive Engineers Generic Open Architecture (SAE GOA) framework to classify the interfaces. It complies with the Joint Technical Architecture as well as the Joint Technical Architecture - Army. JAUS is prescriptive, as opposed to descriptive, and is sufficiently flexible to accommodate technology advances.

OSD chartered the JAUS Working Group (WG) in 1998. Since then, the WG has made significant progress in developing the architecture. The WG consists of members from the Government, industry and academia. The JAUS documentation produced to date include the Reference Architecture Specification, the Domain Model, a Document Control Plan, and the JAUS WG Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).

The Joint Robotics Program Coordinator has initiated JAUS to achieve the following goals: