No driver required: robotic humvees resupply troops downrange.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Position: Unmanned Systems

The Defense Department is pushing hard for the development of fully autonomous robots that can replenish supplies, evacuate casualties and even search for explosives. Driving this demand is the large number of troops being killed by roadside bombs.

Experts have said that it could take years before the first robotic systems are tested and deployed for duty.

A Blacksburg, Va.-based company has demonstrated the art of the possible in a recent Marine Corps exercise that showed how a humvee, laden with computers and a suite of sensors to help it "see," can navigate several miles of mountainous terrain mostly on its own to resupply marines atop a summit.

The autonomous remote control humvee, or ARCH, system retrofits standard military vehicles for unmanned and autonomous operations, says Michael Heming, CEO of TORC Technologies, a robotics engineering company. There are two humvees per system--one "lead" unmanned vehicle that is outfitted with an integrated autonomous navigation system and one "chase" manned vehicle that contains an operator control unit.

The autonomous navigation system was originally developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Urban Challenge in 2007, a race that pitted teams of robotic cars and trucks against each other as they carried out simulated military resupply missions autonomously in a suburban course. Out of an original field of 89 contenders, Team VictorTango--a collaboration between Virginia Tech, TORC and other industry partners--was one of three teams that completed the culminating event.

TORC subsequently received funding from the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization to adapt the technology for use in counter-roadside bomb missions. The organization wanted a two-humvee system with a mechanism for an operator seated in the rear vehicle to control the autonomous one.

TORC engineers designed an operator control unit, a two-screen interface with a joystick. One screen allows an operator to view the video from the lead vehicle. The other screen shows the vehicle's planned path and related map information in much the same way that a commercial navigation device displays guidance and direction for drivers. The joystick allows the operator to pan the camera and to take control of the vehicle, if necessary.

"Autonomy still has some limitations. Having that ability to drop back into teleoperated control is always valuable," says Andrew Culhane, business development manager.

The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory asked the company to demonstrate its technology as part of an unmanned system experiment in...