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From: abg@stc06.ornl.gov (BANGS A L)
Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Subject: Re: Battlefield Robotics (?)
Summary: Building effort
Keywords: Your Robot Wears Army Boots
Message-ID: <1990Aug30.185607.23558@cs.utk.edu>
Date: 30 Aug 90 18:56:07 GMT
References: <59189@bbn.BBN.COM>
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Reply-To: bangsal@ornl.gov (BANGS A L)
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Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab
Lines: 40

In article <59189@bbn.BBN.COM> bpalmer@BBN.COM (Brian Palmer) writes:
>Can anyone share what we have now? (unclassified ... so I guess what we ADMIT
>we have.) Army, navy, airforce drones etc.

I can make a few comments.  First, because robotics is made up of so
many areas, including computer science, ai, mechanical engineering, etc.
it is hard to pin down indirect funding.  Certainly it is true that DoD
has been funding a lot of research in these areas.

When it comes to real systems, one of the largest areas of work has been
in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs.  This includes the various
battlefield drones which can hover over the battle any take pictures or
probably use other sensors such as IR.  I remember about two years ago
there were two competing systems--Attilla and ???--and one of them was
being kept alive primarily because it was being worked on in Sam Nunn's
district (ah, yes, pork in robotics).

I think the Navy has been doing work on stuff underwater, but I know
nothing about that. NOSC (Naval Ocean Systems Center) has been working
on autonomous security robots and teleoperated jeeps.

I heard a talk on the jeeps and there were several interesting issues
they encountered.  They were controlled by operators in vans who had
driving setups like the jeep, and had a helmet mounted video master that
had a slave on the jeep with stereo vision, mounted where the driver
would sit.  When the driver turned his head, the cameras on the vehicle
turned.

One psych problem they had was that when the driver shifted the jeep, he
could feel the shift in his hand, and he could look down and see the
shift move in the jeep, but his hand was not on it!  Another problem
they had was using fiber for returning the video.  Apparently they spent
a great amount of time fixing cables.

Just a few tidbits for your interest...



Alex L. Bangs ---> bangsal@ornl.gov         Of course, my opinions are
Oak Ridge National Laboratory/CESAR            my own darned business...