It could be a rule of modern urban warfare: Send the robot in first. After all, it’s better to risk an unmanned air or ground vehicle than an infantry squad. While the United States has already deployed thousands of robots in Iraq and Afghanistan, its allies are lagging behind. Following the lead of DARPA’s high-profile Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge, both Singapore and the United Kingdom are staging robotics competitions this August to develop their own autonomous war machines.
It’s hard to tell what kind of wars the future will bring, but one thing is certain: Robots will be doing much of the fighting. In fact, they already are. Last year, aerial drones flew 258,502 hours of missions—up from 27,201 in 2002. Spending on unmanned aircraft systems by the U.S. military is expected to hit $3.76 billion by 2010. Robotic warfare, long the stuff of science fiction, is now a reality.
That’s why, late last year, the British defense company BAE Systems released plans for a fast-moving, specially built home at sea for these robot warriors. That ship is the UXV Combatant concept: part warship and part next-gen carrier for unmanned craft.
McLean, VA, June 4, 2008 — QinetiQ North America, a global developer of innovative technology solutions for national defense, today announced that the Foster-Miller subsidiary of its Technology Solutions Group has shipped the first MAARSTM ground robot to the U.S. military under a contract from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal/Low-Intensity Conflict (EOD/LIC) Program within the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO). MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System) is the first fully modular ground robot system capable of providing a measured response including non-lethal, less-lethal and even lethal stand-off capabilities.
The Joint Battlespace Infosphere (JBI) Mercury software provides a flexible, secure information management layer for network-centric systems such as defined in Net Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) in support of Global Information Grid Enterprise Services (GIG ES). JBI Mercury Service Provider software provides publish, subscribe, query, and other functions through a Common Client Application Program Interface (CAPI) as defined by the open community process at http://www.infospherics.org with technical direction from Air Force Research Labs http://www.rl.af.mil/programs/jbi/.
In February, the Air Force Research Laboratory hired BBN Technologies to develop information management software that can sort through vast military databases and pick out the information that’s relevant to particular troops in particular combat situations.
The software also must be able to deliver the needed data in the formats compatible with the equipment being used by each recipient.
For example, soldiers using radios to receive battlefield information would not be sent large digital photographs or video files that their radios cannot process. Instead, they would receive text versions of the same information, said Joseph Loyall, a BBN scientist working on the software program.
A command center, however, might be sent the radio data along with video shot by a UAV, maps, photographs and other information.
And the software must be “fault tolerant” so that it continues to deliver needed information despite disruptions that are likely on a battlefield.
BBN, a Massachusetts-based Internet and ARPANET pioneer, calls its software QED for Quality of Service Enabled Dissemination.
