Systems and methods are described for remotely controlled vehicles that hierarchically transform sensor-detected information into levels of increasing fidelity for highly efficient machine recognition of attributes and features of detected objects/events. Fusion of the feature space representations of the various levels allows correlation with the operator's attention to the respective objects for automated processing/controlling of the unmanned vehicle. High efficiencies in object/event recognition are attained with reduced memory and processor requirements, enabling near autonomous or fully autonomous operation of the vehicle.