Seeing, Thinking Robots to Assist Troops.

AuthorTadjdeh, Yasmin
PositionSmall Unit Dominance

* Outside of a bustling foreign city, a squad of U.S. soldiers moves with intent as they perform a covert mission. A small aerial drone buzzes around them as an unmanned ground vehicle follows, both of them sensing the surroundings and ready to alert the soldiers to anything amiss.

This scene could be commonplace should technology from a burgeoning Pentagon program come to fruition.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is currently leading two major efforts--known as the Squad X Core Technologies and the Squad X Experimentation programs--to equip soldiers with new cutting-edge gear, said Army Lt. Col. Philip Root, the program manager for the projects.

The point of both programs is to develop and integrate new technology--such as unmanned aerial systems, robotic ground vehicles, advanced sensors and machine learning--in such a way that they can act as an extension of the squad, he said.

"This capability would allow small units, particularly in an urban space, to extend their ability to sense and react to threats," Root said. "That's a problem that's going to stay with the ground domain in the foreseeable future."

In the scene envisioned above, the unmanned aerial and ground systems "behave intuitively as any other member of the squad and they know their unique capabilities," Root said.

"The UAS is sensing those areas where it is uniquely capable of doing so and the robotic ground member is moving as a natural member of the squad without being tele-operated... or requiring more cognitive attention."

That gives an individual soldier or Marine a "superhuman understanding of the scene," he added. "You can digest all of these tools rapidly without always monitoring many computer screens or tablets."

The assets are meant to be display-agnostic, so information could be fed into a visor or another viewing device, he noted.

Root--who took the helm of the two separate but closely aligned projects in October--said DARPA is in the midst of experimenting with the new technologies.

For the Squad X Core Technologies portion, DARPA awarded eight phase-two contracts to industry to develop new systems in four different focus areas--precision engagement, non-kinetic engagement, squad sensing and squad autonomy. The companies recently tested those systems at a variety of locations including Fort Stewart, Georgia, and Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona and New Mexico.

"The testing in October went exceptionally well. We had terrific feedback from the...

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