Automation's Edge

Technology will soon take a load off of ground troops in the field and enable them to see threats over hills and into buildings.

Infantry squads will still carry 100 pounds of gear, ammo, water and batteries each, but much of it will no longer be on their backs. Instead, it will follow in an eight-wheeled robotic pack mule that can carry 1,000 pounds for 60 miles or 72 hours on a single charge.

To further reduce their burden, dismounted soldiers could wear exoskeletons. Most attach to the ankle and knee, but can go up to the shoulders. Some are powered, others are not. Either way, they aid muscles and joints, enhancing strength and endurance.

Should the squad find a suspicious building in the distance, soldiers can launch a drone no bigger than a hummingbird that peeks around dangerous corners, transmitting live video and high-definition still shots. The Black Hornet can fly up to 25 minutes with a range of 2 kilometers.

A larger overhead unmanned aerial vehicle, run by the battalion, can use thermal sites to scan the building ahead of them floor by floor and spot threats.

If eyes are needed inside, soldiers can pull a small robot from the pack mule and chuck it through an open window. It moves on tracks as it transmits video. The squad leader can toggle between camera views on a ruggedized tablet, looking for enemy combatants or explosives. The robot also has an arm and claw-like hand to manipulate objects.

Sound like a few years away? Think again.

Soldiers have used the tiny drones, the Black Hornet, with success in Afghanistan while the Army is set to start fielding the throwable robots, the Squad Packable Utility Robot, soon and the pack mule, the Multi-Utility Tactical Transport, later this year.

Meanwhile, the Soldier Effectiveness Directorate at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center in Natick, Massachusetts, anticipates testing several exoskeleton prototypes as soon as COVID-19 restrictions lift.

“The goal is to see if soldiers accept exoskeleton technologies to help them move, lift and carry their equipment before getting fatigued,” says David J. Audet, the DEVCOM Systems Division chief, “to extend their physiological performance in physically demanding environments.”

“Our soldiers are physically overloaded,” adds Ted Maciuba, the deputy director of Robotics Requirements at the Maneuver Capabilities Development Integration Directorate, part of Army Futures Command, at Fort Benning, Georgia. “We want to make our soldiers sharper during combat operations so they can make better decisions.”

He says the Army will field thousands of robots — ground and air systems — across the service in the coming year, including the National Guard, at all echelons of brigade combat teams.

Small unmanned aircraft systems, so-called soldier-borne sensors, also improve decision-making and save lives by expanding situational awareness, Maciuba says. “With the SBS, you’re giving a squad leader the chance to see what’s on the other side of a building or a hill before they are seen,” he explains. “We want to get there first with better capability than our adversaries have.”

He says each platoon that deploys in the near future will get a short-range recon SUAS quadcopter that is 3 pounds with a range of 3 kilometers. Each company already has a medium-range recon SUAS, the RQ-11B Raven, with a range of 10 kilometers. A proposed long-range recon SUAS at the battalion-level with extended range will give commanders information about any artillery batteries or mortars they face.

“You then have the geo-reference locations for enemy systems for targeting,” he points out, “and you don’t get in the range of their weapons.”

“National Guard units could have a constellation of UAVs and manned aircraft,” Maciuba adds, which would be “significantly more effective” in disaster settings because “you could get sensors that would give locations and, to some degree, the health of people at risk.

We can use unmanned systems to give us situational awareness inside a building before a soldier enters.

—David Viens, a retired Army officer and FLIR's vice president of business development

THE ARMY’S ROBOT and SUAS plans are years in the making. And the rest of Defense Department shares the enthusiasm for the technology.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Virginia, where scientists and engineers develop the systems of tomorrow, is looking at how to use large numbers of SUAS for missions in urban environments. Each device is autonomous, but they operate collectively.

These so-called swarms could help in combat settings or disaster cleanups or when you need “wide-area situational awareness at the street-level” with crowds. “You could tease out noncombatants from those with ill will,” says Timothy Chung, the program manager for DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office.

Chung’s research uses commercially available drones with 15 to 20 minute limitations in flying. But the technology is envisioned to still help future operational units “identify hostile actions before our troops go in,” he says, and “keep our warfighters out of harm’s way as long as possible.”

These robot teams aim to use a “swarm interaction grammar to enable use of rich interfaces, such as verbal instructions or hand gestures for novel swarm command,” he says. They also have cameras.

Russia is working on the same type of approach with unmanned miniature tanks, according to reports, with a possible end goal of replacing soldiers in combat.

DARPA is broadening its pursuit of swarm technology with a “Subterranean Challenge” in which research groups compete for more than $6 million in prize money. The goal is to explore new approaches that can rapidly map, navigate, search and explore “complex underground environments” like tunnels, the urban underground and even natural cave networks.

“Networking is a problem to solve,” Chung explains. Researchers are trying to design different robots with the ability to operate outside of communications range and outside of instructions so that they can follow the commander’s intent with autonomy.

He says these robots would potentially provide “actionable situational awareness” after a natural disaster. It could also determine “where the survivors are located” and where the hazardous gas or “bad air” is and help first responders to circumvent it. That would help National Guard units involved in emergency response.

In the future, DARPA imagines robots supporting logistics, transport and resupply. Meanwhile, the Air Force is experimenting with “robot dogs” equipped with sensors and cameras to augment security at air bases. The idea is to free up airmen to focus on other tasks.

DARPA is also looking for ways to operate more aircraft remotely. Its Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System enables existing manned aircraft to fly with “reduced onboard crew,” says Stuart Young, another project manager at the agency’s Tactical Technology Office.

His team has been working on ALIAS for six years on nine very different aircraft, including the F-16 fighter and the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. Young says it could work in an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter.

The first step is converting the aircraft from mechanical to fly-by-wire controls. The operator can then use a tablet. The system can handle functions from engine start-up to avoiding obstructions during flight and even managing crosswinds.

ALIAS can take control of the aircraft, which leaves the pilot free to concentrate on aspects that require judgement, such as responding to hostile forces or decisions in disaster relief. “The aircraft can determine landing zones on its own,” Young says. “We’re trying to make the pilot more effective.”

The DARPA team is working on advances that would enable one pilot to command two aircraft simultaneously on one mission.

It is also working on another project, Robot Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resilience, appropriately known as RACER, which aims to develop technology to enable vehicles to drive at operationally relevant speeds.

“Our goal in the program is to go anywhere an Abrams [tank] can go as fast as an Abrams can go,” Young says. “We want the robots out front.”

This is a challenge, he adds, because humans are good at adapting to things they have never seen, but robots are not. “We need to get the behaviors to be more predictable to deal with novelty in the environment,” he says.

MUCH of technological innovation, especially when it comes to robotics, still originates from industry.

FLIR Systems, the manufacturer of the Black Hornet, is partnering with Textron Systems to develop the Army’s first truly unmanned combat vehicle, the RIPSAW M5. Currently in field trials, it is controlled by a remote operator, but can also operate semiautonomously.

Weighing more than 10 tons, the tracked RIPSAW can reach speeds of 40 mph with a silent engine that makes it difficult to detect. Its artificial intelligence-enabled sensors provide 360-degree situational awareness in any conditions, day or night.

The vehicle comes with several small robots. One is FLIR’s Skyraider, which is a drone that provides autonomous target detection and classification. The other is a 30-pound robot, the SUGV, which can climb stairs, manipulate objects and lift up to 22 pounds. Troops in Afghanistan and Iraq have used the robot to neutralize improvised explosive devices.

Combined, they can expand situational awareness in settings that can get complicated and dangerous, overseas or at home. According to David Viens with FLIR, an unmanned RIPSAW M5 equipped with a sensor suite could identify areas of contamination after a domestic incident involving weapons of mass destruction and limit risk to personnel.

Viens, FLIR’s vice president of business development, marvels at what robots can do for soldiers in field. He knows more than a little something about the grave dangers they can encounter. He is a retired Army lieutenant colonel who served in the 7th Special Forces Group,

“Nowadays we can use unmanned systems to give us situational awareness inside a building before a soldier enters,” explains Viens. “There is a revolution happening in the military when it comes to robotics.”

Despite the advances in technology, there are still challenges with robots that require more work. Research continues on making robots more functional on their own, like true battle buddies.

Chad Kessens, a roboticist with Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army-Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Maryland says it can take three or more soldiers to support one deployed ground robot. Kessens’s goal is for one soldier to handle three or more robots.

“We want robots saving humans,” he says, “not humans saving robots.”

He took a course back in 2011 for soldiers learning to use robots to remove IEDs. Some of the trainers said it was difficult for experienced operators to right robots when they tipped over. One soldier got out of his vehicle in a combat setting and saved the robot when it fell over. Kessens did personal research on self-righting based on cockroaches. He and his collaborators at the University of California-Berkeley looked at the way three different types of roaches turned themselves over when they were upside down.

“We’re going to be adding limited autonomy,” he says about robots. The vision is for robots to function like a hunting dog. The operator would provide simple commands and the robot would operate on its own for a few minutes. “We’re still very much in the research stage tackling one task at a time,” Kessens says. “There are always tasks or special circumstances that we need solutions for, but over time the number of those continues to shrink.”

The goal is to take soldiers out of dangerous situations, he adds, “so humans don’t have to put themselves at risk.”