If the technology works as promised, the Army of the future will
assign robots to conduct many of the functions currently performed
by humans on the battlefield.
As part of the Future Combat System (FCS) program, the Army and
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are developing a new
20-ton vehicle that, in about 20 to 30 years, will replace the heavy
70-ton Abrams tanks. Having robots as part of the force structure
could help the lighter vehicles become more effective, said Kerry
Kachejian, a manager for business development at the Raytheon Co.,
in Falls Church, Va.
Raytheon is one of many companies in the United States today that
are pushing robotics research and trying to gain a share of the
Army’s FCS dollars. Raytheon is part of one of four teams
competing in the FCS program. The Army plans to select a winner
some time before the end of the decade, so FCS can be available
by 2012 or 2015.
“How do you make a 20-ton vehicle as capable as a 70-ton
vehicle? Well, the basic premise is to distribute the functions
among multiple platforms,” explained Kachejian. Under the
FCS concept, certain parts of the vehicle fleet will be robotic,
in order to keep soldiers out of harm’s way. Robotic direct-
and indirect-fire vehicles might produce a signature—a sound
or sight that might make them targets—but the human operators
in the command/control vehicle could stay clandestine and out of
the line of fire.
Removing humans from military vehicles offers other benefits as
well, said Louise Borrelli, a robotics expert at Raytheon. Without
crews aboard, an unmanned air vehicle would no longer be limited
in the amount of G-forces it can handle. Current passenger vehicles
are also restricted in their maneuverability. Borrelli said, “FCS
is trying to take that limitation away and look at mobility characteristics
for not only going around obstacles, but being able to negotiate
obstacles to take advantage of the fact that there won’t be
people in there. So you can do things like flip over, fall over,
roll over and sustain high G-forces.”
One of the most challenging technologies in robotic systems is
the ability to make them operate autonomously, or at least semi-autonomously.
“Depending upon the terrain and the environment, we may have
a high degree of autonomy, where your conditions are not very complex.
But when you get into a very complex condition, the degree of autonomy
may be less. It may be more like supervisory autonomy,” explained
Borrelli.
Ongoing research in the fields of robot autonomy and off-road mobility
is sponsored by the Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, among others. If a vehicle gets stuck or cannot sense properly,
then the operator must intervene. This has led to the development
of software that will automatically alert the operator, so he or
she can get the vehicle back on track.
An M1 Abrams tank typically carries a four-person crew. With FCS,
the capabilities of one tank would be distributed among several
vehicles, noted Kachejian. If the decision is to have two or three
robots and a manned command-control system, he said, “you
don’t want to have a separate operator for each robot.”
According to Kachejian, the Army would really like the robots to
operate entirely autonomously when they are together and only have
operators get involved in emergencies.
Then, there is the question of the level of operator involvement,
Kachejian said. “Hopefully, they are not completely dedicated
operators, so they could be doing other things, but get involved
by exception.” For example, an infantryman who was assigned
to clearing a building would not have to interrupt his duties, grab
a laptop and joystick, and control the robot.
A large part of the work for the FCS going on at Raytheon is on
command, control and situation awareness. “Part of what we
are looking at are difference modalities for command and control,
hands-free operations, so we don’t overwhelm the eyes and
the ears of the operator,” said Borrelli. The research is
geared to making communication easier. “Right now, under the
FCS concept program, the idea is that you now have a distributed
force structure. … You really need a distributed environment
and part of what brings that together and makes it work is the network
and communications infrastructure,” she explained.
Today, a human must be kept in the loop to support weapons fire,
and that requires a reliable communications and networking infrastructure,
especially when the controller is located at a different site from
the vehicle.
“In a battlefield, having real-time command and control and
being able to respond to things, sense and react to things has life-or-death
consequences,” said Kachejian. Plus, tactical communications
for on-the-move operations have to be wireless, like a cellular
phone network, but much more sophisticated. A cellular phone network
has fixed base stations, but that infrastructure is not going to
be available in remote locations, where the Army may have to fight.
“You don’t want time taken to set up an infrastructure.
So you really need communications on demand, on the move,”
Borrelli said.
Under the FCS concept, the infrastructure is embedded in the mounted
and dismounted force.
Sensor technologies are critical for unmanned systems. The vehicles
themselves are worthless without useful payloads. Borrelli said
that smaller and lighter sensors will not only increase the overall
performance but will also aid in determining what information gets
sent around the network—while minimizing the bandwidth being
used. Various cameras, such as thermal and daytime, are used to
make sure the robots can collect data. That information has to be
sent back to the commander.
“We’re trying to create an environment where the commander
gets the right information at the right time,” said Kachejian.
“If you have a dismounted person who maybe goes into a vehicle,
they can ‘plug in’ to the vehicle and access the information
using the resources within the vehicle. If they are dismounted then
they can go use the resources in the wearable,” Borrelli added.
The gear that robot operators would need includes a set of gloves
for command and control, glasses for display, wearable computers
and communications devices and a low-profiling antenna. The antennas
and communications gear can be embedded in the robots, in order
to avoid having a long mast sticking up in the air. This is important
because the robots, especially the small ones, are low to the ground,
Kachejian said. “Some of the robots are less than a foot high,
and are a communications challenge, just by their size.”
Along with sensors, some of the larger vehicles would be outfitted
with weapons. Ultimately, he said, “The force would like to
have the full spectrum of weapons available, because on one block
if could be a crowd in a riot and you want to fire a crowd control
agent, and the next block could be a shooting war.”