Ground Robotics are coming to the Army, with experimentation ongoing. Unmanned Air systems have been in use for decades now and advancements in robotics technology is taking things beyond the paradigm of the EOD robot. The move is understandable. You can put a robot many places that you can’t put a human and if something happens, the robot doesn’t bleed.
However, far from unleashing an Army Hunter-Killer systems from the Terminator franchise, the Army envisions forming heterogeneous teams with Soldiers in the loop:
• Large/Small, Air/Ground/Sea, Manned and Unmanned
• Humans in multiple roles (Commanders, Teammates, bystanders)
• Systems with varying levels of autonomy, sensors, processing, and operational payloads
• Collaborative systems with adaptable roles operating in distributed, decentralized, and layered operations
• Increased team-based cognitive and tactical behaviors, dynamic tasking, and real-time distributed perception and decision making
• Operations in complex and contested environments–peer adversarial capabilities
• RAS will operate as part of joint inter-service and multinational teams
During the recent NDIA Future Force Capabilities Conference, Dr. Brett Piekarski and Mr. Elias Rigas of DEVCOM ARL offered a presentation that discussed Next Generation Robotic Technologies.
You can access it here: