Efforts to field new kinds of ground robots have had little success.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: ROBOTICS

The life-saving qualities of ground robots have been touted since explosive ordnance disposal teams began widely using them at the outset of the Iraq invasion in 2003. But since then, other applications for the potentially life-saving technology have not reached Iraq or Afghanistan.

Their predicted influx into the battlefield has stalled. That's not to say that research into myriad applications hasn't continued. But so far, the experiments have not made the transition to the current fights.

Acceptability on the part of senior military leaders is one of the major roadblocks, officials said at the National Defense Industrial Association ground robotics conference in Miami.

"How do we make these systems real systems?" asked Grace Bochenek, director of the Army Tank and Automotive, Research and Development Center. "It's one of the stumbling blocks we are having as a community."

More than two and a half years ago, TARDEC showcased its convoy active safety technology, or CAST, which allows soldiers in convoys to travel in trucks hands-free. Roadside bombs targeting supply vehicles have taken scores of American lives. What if drivers could be freed up to watch the road sides for potential ambushes? Or if only one driver was present in a convoy of a half dozen trucks?

"We need to be able to get our drivers off the roads with autonomous capabilities," said Brig. Gen. Lee Miller, director of the capabilities development directorate at the Marine Corps combat development command.

Bochenek said the CAST technology is now mature enough to be fielded. As is the case with every new system, however, it's a matter of having official requirements documents in place as well as the funding.

A robotics rodeo held last September at Fort Hood, Texas, at the urging of then base commander Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, may have loosened the logjam, at least for CAST.

Lynch, as a former combatant commander who also holds a master's in robotics technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the ground robot community's champion in the Army. At a Washington unmanned systems conference last year, he railed against the lack of progress being made in fielding "life-saving robotics technologies." He listed five technologies that were mature enough to be sent to the battlefield. Among them was a convoy-leader system. CAST was demonstrated at the rodeo the following month. Since then, the necessary operational needs statement has been obtained, said Bochenek.

"We...