Shift Magazine - July 22, 2019 - 24

The Army has autonomous resupply trucks
that can be operated by remote control or
in convoys in "leader-follower" mode.

ARMED WITH

INTELLIGENCE

Military working to make its autonomous technology smarter
BY DANIELLE SZATKOWSKI

eeping soldiers safe continues to be the main reason
the military enlists unmanned vehicles into its ranks,
especially for resupply missions.
The U.S. Army has been tinkering with ground robotics and automated technologies for decades, yet there are still
no real systems in the military field that are fully autonomous.
Nevertheless, the Army wants to finish what it started, so it
plans to accelerate its use of autonomous defense technologies.
For now, rather than fully autonomous systems, there are
semi-automated solutions that require having a soldier on hand,
whether it's to monitor the technology or interact with it.

AUTONOMY CHALLENGES

Engineer Bernard Theisen of the U.S. Army CCDC Ground
Vehicle Systems Center in Warren, Mich., says the U.S. military faces challenges similar to those of commercial developers
when it comes to autonomous vehicles.
"The biggest challenge deals with perceiving the world and
then processing the data," he said. "For example, most humans
take their driver's test when they're 16 or 18 years old, which
is like 16 to 18 years of learning how vehicles and driving rules
work. Now, we're trying to program a robot to take in all that
information and figure it out. What happens is you end up with
these edge cases or corner cases that the robot doesn't know
how to handle, resulting in system failure.
"This is a significant thing that humans can do," Theisen said.
"When we're engaged in a situation we don't understand, we
usually build our own solution."
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shift * july 2019

Another challenge that the U.S. military faces deals with testing
vehicles and getting them to successfully adapt to changing environments. Theisen said the military will conduct tests in snow and
ice, but it must first let the robot know that it's in snow and ice mode.
Robots rely on algorithm planners developed by humans. But
if they encounter a situation not covered by the algorithm, they
won't know what to do. For example, Theisen said, a self-driving
car doesn't know how to react to a person in a wheelchair trying
to chase ducks off a road.
"Right now, the intelligence is just not there for robots to
smartly select between planners," Theisen said.

JUMP-START

The military helped jump-start today's commercial AV efforts,
most notably through competitions in 2004, 2005 and 2007
sponsored by its r&d arm, the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, or DARPA.
One of the most memorable DARPA entries was a behemoth called TerraMax, a driverless ground vehicle designed by
Oshkosh Trucks, now Oshkosh Defense.
Oshkosh Defense has sidelined its efforts around TerraMax
technologies in favor of the Army's new autonomous initiative
called Expedient Leader-Follower.
Expedient Leader-Follower is a program where convoys are
assembled that consist of one vehicle with a driver followed by
driverless vehicles. It's part of the larger Autonomous Resupply
see MILITARY, p. 26

Shift Magazine - July 22, 2019

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