Defense Technology International - December 2007 - (Page 32)

VEHICLES ROBOTIC HEAVY METTLE TerraMax aims at real-world missions in Darpa race DAVID AXE•VICTORVILLE, CALIF. T he race was barely 2 hr. old when TerraMax ran into trouble. The 10-ft.-tall, 12-ton robotic truck—the biggest by far of the 11 ﬁnalists in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (Darpa) Urban Challenge competition—maneuvered into a lot on the 60-mi. course at an abandoned Air Force base near Victorville, Calif., to prove its parking ability. But something went wrong. The truck, which was fully autonomous like all the contestants, veered o the tarmac and nudged a vacant building. about dodging lawsuits. The ultimate goal of Urban Challenge was to advance technologies that might one day bump some soldiers o vulnerable supply convoys, which have been especially hard hit in Iraq. That doesn’t mean future logistics patrols will be totally robotic. Mixed convoys will require autonomous vehicles to operate on urban battleﬁelds teeming with manned military and civilian vehicles and pedestrians. Preserving life wasn’t just a condition of Urban Challenge; it was the whole point. The competition took place Nov. 3, DAVID AXE/DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL TerraMax robot truck lost the Urban Challenge, but showed that a large vehicle can be modiﬁed for autonomous convoy duties. And as quick as that, TerraMax’s race was over. The ’bot, built by Oshkosh Trucks of Oshkosh, Wis., was ordered into impound. Over the next couple of hours, four more vehicles joined it, each disqualiﬁed for violating the fundamental rule repeatedly stressed by Darpa Director Anthony J. Tether during months of team interviews: “Safety is paramount.” Vehicles that swerved too far o course, barreled through stop signs or collided with other robots or any of the Darpa cars driven by professional drivers to simulate tra c, were canned. Tether’s obsession with safety wasn’t 32 after a week of qualifying trials that trimmed a field of 35 robotic vehicles to 11 ﬁnalists. Urban Challenge was the third installment of the race, which debuted in 2004. TerraMax was the only Urban Challenge contender based on an in-service military truck—the Marine Corps’ Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement—and the one most likely to lead to a production vehicle. If any of the robots on display in Victorville end up actually saving soldiers’ lives in coming years, it will likely be TerraMax. Most of the other teams at Urban Challenge seemed focused on promoting autonomy technologies to the civilian automotive industry. While disappointing to the roughly dozen members of Team Oshkosh, including laser and vision experts from Teledyne Technologies Inc. and the University of Parma (Italy), TerraMax’s disqualiﬁcation actually has little bearing on the design’s potential and development, says team member John Beck, from Oshkosh’s Unmanned Systems Div. “We want to perform well here, but ultimately we want to sell kits to customers,” Beck says. “The real issue is to take this technology and make it more formal, until we can give it to the soldier in the ﬁeld,” team leader Gary Schmiedel says. “What Darpa has done is give us a problem set to solve.” That problem set—autonomous navigation in an urban environment while obeying California tra c laws—was actually harder than the problems an operational robotic truck might face in a combat zone, Beck says. “If we put TerraMax in-theater today, I doubt it would have to obey California law.” Oshkosh also heaped on its own requirements aimed at making the robot racer more tactical. The result was a “near-prototype” vehicle that di ered in many ways from its rivals, and that in quick leaps has blazed a trail for future ﬂeets of robotic military logistics vehicles. Most of the Urban Challenge contenders share a common design strategy. Teams combine a medium-size sport utility vehicle platform with o -the-shelf optical and laser sensors tied to commercially available microprocessors running custom software. All the racers relied on GPS for waypoints. Top platforms at the Victorville race included Carnegie Mellon University’s Chevrolet Tahoe, a Ford Escape, Land Rover, Subaru Outback and several Volkswagen Passat station wagons. Teams di ered in the number and mix of sensors they used, but most settled on spinning light-detection and ranging laser scanners (Lidar)—German company Sick AG’s model was standard on Urban Challenge ’bots—as primary sensors, with ranging radars or optical cameras as backups. Only TerraMax had optical sensors as its primary “eyes.” “There are no moving parts,” says Chris Yakes, Oshkosh’s director of advanced products. “We can produce a vision-based system for a decent price. It also gives you much more information [than Lidar].” Plus, optical systems are passive and therefore stealthy on the battleﬁeld. “Active sensors like radars www.aviationweek.com/dti DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL DECEMBER 2007 http://www.aviationweek.com/dti

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Defense Technology International - December 2007 Contents Around the World Science Watch Tech Watch BrahMos: Ramjet Ship Killer r-e-s-p-e-c-t Deja Vu Trump Card Dubai Demos Agile Helos Joint Force Online Charge UGVs Creep, Crawl to Victory Sweet Ride Fast, Lethal Ship Defense Networking Stealth: Why Raptors Can't Talk The Net Cutting Edge First Person In Review Insight

Defense Technology International - December 2007

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