Navy to field a family of next-generation bomb disposal robots.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Ground Robots

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- The Navy will field a family of bomb disposal robots to replace the ad hoc commercial systems being used in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

Byron Brezina, robotics director of Naval explosive ordnance technology division, said plans call for a suite of small, medium and large robots that will be able to perform a variety of missions depending on their size.

The Navy will "take all the lessons learned, build on the success [of current EOD robots], and come out with a true family of systems," Brezina said.

A "large smart mule" with a manipulator arm that can dispatch up to three smaller robots is also being considered, he said at the National Defense Industrial Association ground robotics conference.

The Navy, which is the lead service in charge of fielding bomb disposal robots, wants a scalable common chassis--not unlike what the Army is building for its Future Combat System vehicles. The robots will run on open software architecture, meaning there will be no more robots running on proprietary operating systems.

EOD robots have been one of the technology success stories of the Iraq conflict. But it was not by design. The proliferation of improvised explosive devices beginning soon after the invasion in 2003 forced the Navy to speed commercial-off-the-shelf robots into battle zones.

Several systems were fielded, but two main robots emerged as the workhorses for EOD teams: the Talon, manufactured by Foster-Miller, and iRobot's Packbot.

Both have proven their worth, and have helped save lives by lessening the exposure of EOD personnel to bombs, "but we can do better," Brezina said.

Army Col. Karl Reinhard, who recently returned from Iraq where he served as the commander of Task Force Troy, the U.S. military's in-country counter-IED team, said EOD personnel have performed some 25,000 missions in Iraq, and suffered 30 casualties. The casualties would have been higher if it weren't for the robots, he said.

However, "improvements can be made and should be made," he said. Robots should be able to see, touch and even hear when they are downrange acting as surrogates for the technicians, he said.

"That robot should be a complete extension of the soldier. The soldier should feel as if he is there," Reinhard said.

An important improvement will be the open architecture systems so robots can use "plug-and-play" attachments. If the need arises for new tools or sensors to be placed on the robot, they need to be...