[Engineering Feature]
Unmanned Military Vehicles: Robots On The Rise
These mighty machines are taking to the land, sea, and sky to keep soldiers out of harm’s way.
Unmanned vehicles represent the new cornerstone of the military. The U.S. Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) augmented its latest manned ground vehicles (MGVs) with an array of unmanned air and ground vehicles. The U.S. Air Force and Navy also have a number of unmanned vehicles in the works and deployed around the world.
Because of their lower cost, these vehicles are quickly finding their way into every military organization on the planet. The U.S. Army expects 15 brigades to be equipped with complete FCS vehicles by 2030.
The U.S. Air Force uses Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk surveillance aircraft to provide high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images with 1.0/0.3-m resolution (WAS/ Spot) (Fig. 1). It can survey as much as 40,000 square miles in a day, with a maximum endurance of 35 hours. Powered by an Allison Rolls-Royce AE3007H turbofan engine, it also has a ceiling of 65,000 ft. The 32,250-lb unmanned aircraft features a 130.9-ft wingspan and a payload of 3000 lb as well.
Some of the rugged subsystems within the Global Hawk come from Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, including the Integrated Mission Management Computer (IMMC) and Sensor Management Unit (SMU). An IPv6 Gigabit Ethernet network provides the communication between various modules.
As with most remote-control vehicles, the Global Hawk utilizes wireless communication. Consequently, pilots can be located on the other side of the planet. Removing the pilot from the aircraft’s equation requires additional hardware, but it eliminates an even greater amount of hardware needed to support a human occupant.
The MQ-1 Predator (Fig. 2) and the MQ-9 Reaper (Predator-B) are medium- to high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that pack a punch. In addition to surveillance chores, they can be armed with a range of payloads including the GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bomb and the AGM-114 Hellfire II air-to-ground missiles.
The 432d Air Wing from Creech Air Force Base (AFB), located near Indian Springs, Nev., is the first wing that’s totally dedicated to operating the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper. The U.S. Air Force UAV Battlelab flight test and development facility at Creech AFB is dedicated to developing UAVs. It’s one of six original Air Force battlelabs operated under the Air Warfare Center.
The Predator, smaller than the Global Hawk with its 66-ft wingspan, can carry smart bombs in addition to heavy sensor packages up to 1.5 tons on external hard points. Though not as fleet as an F-16, the Predator’s endurance of 14+ hours puts it in high demand on the battlefield.
As with the Global Hawk, Predator crew size isn’t limited since it operates at a remote site. Shifts of pilots and operators can handle a single vehicle, and work on unmanned vehicles in general is moving toward a single pilot controlling multiple, semi-autonomous vehicles at once.
This can also allow specialists to quickly move between input sources by simply clicking on the appropriate window of their command console. Having a team available means pilots and operators can be fresh even when the vehicle has been in the air for half a day.
YOU’RE IN THE ARMY NOW The air may be great for junior birdmen, but plenty of unmanned vehicles roam down on the ground, too. There’s even a range of small unmanned ground vehicles (SUGVs) like the Dragon Runner from Foster-Miller (Fig. 3) or iRobot’s PackBot (see “Real- World Robotics: An Appetite For Construction” at www.electronicdesign.com, ED Online 8076).
Standing only 5 in. tall, the Dragon Runner will give the Energizer Bunny a run for its batteries. It’s designed to operate even after being tossed through a window two or three flights up, over a wall, or down a flight of stairs. This lets operators place the robot close to its target before it proceeds under its own power. For great video of the Dragon Runner in action, go to www.automatika.com/downloads/DR_Tough_Cookie.avi.
Foster-Miller’s 350-lb Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System (MAARS) is the follow-up to the popular Talon and Talonbased Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System (SWORDS). These platforms address a range of applications, from explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) to offensive capabilities like the Predator, albeit with bullets instead of missiles.
Land-based vehicles tend to have more challenges than airor water-based vehicles because terrain and obstacles are major issues. Aircraft often die when they hit obstacles. Underwater vehicles operate in a similar open environment, but at slower speeds. Likewise, surface water vehicles function in a relatively open 2D environment.
"Keeping a human in the loop can be important, because making critical decisions with limited or contradictory information is still best done by people."
People are slow to make decisions. People get frustrated. People lack the attention span to stay alert. People can only track a few critical items at a time. People periodically use poor judgment. Machines can do a better job on their own, given the appropriate policies that have been defined ahead of time.
Humans can successfully create policies for these systems now, “if they used the right technology”. When given time to consider “how information items should be valued” and “how information items are inter-related”, military commanders could (using technology that is available today) develop effective policies for the robotic systems that will allow them to operate without the ‘human-in-the loop’ limitations”. When machines are given appropriate (human-defined) tactics and strategies to pursue goals on their own, they will dominate over human “remote-controlled” devices.
This technology is available now (TRL 4-5). It will allow devices to make the complex judgmental decisions that some feel only humans can make. The U.S. military has not found time to investigate this new technology. Compsim’s Knowledge Enhanced Electronic Logic (KEEL Technology) makes it easy to define, test, package, audit, and explain policies that address complex, dynamic, non-linear, multi-dimensional, inter-related problem sets that these devices will encounter. The resulting cognitive engines create real-time control decisions that are 100% explainable and auditable and suitable for real-time life critical decisions (suitable for audit by military courts). The small memory footprint allows them to be integrated into 8-bit controllers and up. The technology is platform and architecture independent and can easily be integrated into almost any existing design.
It is probably obvious that almost anyone can obtain an unmanned aerial vehicle today. The physical packages for ground and water devices will follow shortly. It ‘should be obvious’ that it will be the control systems that differentiate the systems for their capability. The perception that “keeping humans in the loop is important” will last only until the first fully autonomous device hits the battlefield.
Anonymous -September 25, 2008
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