inside science and technology

December 2007

What’s Next for Ground Robots?

By Grace Jean

When the Pentagon’s premiere research lab held a robot race across the California desert three years ago, it not only generated excitement in industry and academia, but also created skeptics who scoffed at the idea of driverless cars and trucks traveling 142 miles on their own. Indeed, critics had plenty of ammunition after none of the teams crossed the finish line. The best entry only completed seven miles of the course.

After a more successful desert race in 2005, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency raised the stakes this year on its competition by challenging teams with a 60-mile urban course at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif. Loaded with sensor suites and on-board computing systems, vehicles ranging from cars and sports utility vehicles to military trucks navigated the streets and executed tasks that simulated battlefield supply missions.

Like beginning student drivers, the unmanned vehicles balked at intersections before merging into moving traffic, which was composed of 50 human-driven cars and other teams’ entries. They swerved into the paths of oncoming vehicles, hopped curbs, and in a few cases, swiped other competitors and collided into barriers and buildings.

But six of the 11 finalists successfully finished the race, emerging mostly unscathed and providing the Defense Department with some viable technologies that it may want to consider for taking troops out of harm’s way. Carnegie Mellon University’s Tartan Racing team won the $2 million first prize with “Boss,” an automated Chevy Tahoe that completed the course in 250 minutes and 20 seconds.

With military forces suffering major casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq, Congress’ mandate that the Defense Department turn one-third of its manned combat vehicles into autonomous systems by 2015 has become more urgent. DARPA’s hope is to further accelerate the development of autonomous ground vehicle technologies to help the Pentagon meet that objective.

“These are very lofty goals,” said John Beck, chief engineer for unmanned systems at Oshkosh Truck Corp., and leader of the company’s team entry, TerraMax.

Driving across the desert requires certain technical advances in obstacle detection capabilities and computing; driving through a city-like landscape demands even greater technological finesse to mimic human judgment and reactions. DARPA’s Urban Challenge is pushing those technologies to the edge, he said.

The team in previous challenges relied upon laboratory-based instruments to automate its vehicle. It now applies commercially available sensors that may expedite the production of its robot, said Gary Schmiedel, vice president of advanced product engineering at Oshkosh, which produces the Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement truck for the Marine Corps.

For the competition, the company automated a modified version of its MTVR. Engineers took the base of the 6x6 tractor variant and removed the last axle to enable the vehicle to turn in a 42-foot diameter circle. They then integrated a suite of sensors, including three light detection and ranging system units and a global positioning system, into the bumper of the truck and incorporated cameras into its cab. The computing hardware — the “brains” of the vehicle — was mounted underneath the passenger seat.

“Other than a new screen in the cab, you can’t tell that it’s an autonomous vehicle readily,” said Christopher Yakes, director of the advanced products group.

Standing 12 feet tall, 22.6 feet long and weighing 24,500 pounds, the TerraMax dwarfed the other finalists’ Chevys, Fords and Volkswagens. However, after completing four of the six checkpoints during the competition’s first mission, the truck drove into a building and was disqualified from the race.

The team is focusing on integrating the sensors to a greater degree.

“Ultimately, our goal is to be able to provide this technology to our vehicles in a kit form, such that we could retrofit our vehicles with this technology throughout the world,” said Yakes.

The company has incorporated the kit onto its military heavy cargo truck that carries an 18-ton payload. It also has applied the kit to its latest variant of the heavy expandable mobility tactical truck, the A4, said Schmiedel.

“We think that the requirements by the military to field something like this would be slightly different. But the technologies that we’re developing in order to meet the goal for the Urban Challenge are helping us gain the ability to meet the requirements that the military may provide us,” said Beck.

Schmiedel added that the next logical step in challenging industry and academia might be for military commanders to determine a challenge for the teams to solve. The services have yet to announce the types of missions they envision for unmanned ground vehicles.

“Do they want to do leader-follower convoys? Do they want the follow vehicle to be 5 meters behind, or five days behind? Those are the sorts of questions that we’re really looking for next, to have some tactics developed so we can tailor the operation of the autonomous system to achieve those tactics,” said Schmiedel.

Please email your comments to GJean@ndia.org

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