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Battlefield Robots: to Iraq, and Beyond

20-Jun-2005 02:46 EDT

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Dragon Runner “Throwbot”

The Joint Robotics Program Working Group meeting at the Sheraton Station Square Hotel in Pittsburgh, PA offered a window into current progress in robotics. EOD robots and reconnaissance robots such as the backpackable Dragon Runner “throwbot” are performing in Iraq, where they’re affecting the direction of future military robotics and saving soldiers’ lives.

The U.S. Marines deployed a dozen Dragon Runners to Iraq a year ago. The four-wheeled device is only a little more than a foot long and not quite a foot wide and weighs 9 pounds. It can be thrown over walls, out a three-story window or up a flight of stairs; the flat, 5-inch-high machine can operate whichever way it lands.

Cliff Hudson, who directs the Joint Robotics Program for the Department of Defense, notes that the Dragon Runner is doing very well, providing a safe means to look around corners or explore rooms. The Dragon Runners have become so effective, in fact, that the enemy has begun to target them. Ironically, Cliff Hudson has noted that one response to recon robots being targeted is to develop cheaper, expendable robots that he likens to radio controlled cars.

Mr. Hudson, your soldiers are way ahead of you.

Automatika Inc. licensed the Dragon Runner technology from Carnegie Mellon University. The company is building more Dragon Runners at the Pentagon’s request and is doubling production capacity in anticipation of a large order later this year.

The Iraq conflict has increased pressure to deploy battlefield robots, while also serving as a live test bed for the technology. “Throwbots” like the Dragon runner and UAVs like the Raven have perormed extremely well, and explosive ordnance disposal robots have been the biggest success thus far. About 500 EOD robots are currently on duty, and several are credited with saving soldiers’ lives.

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Gladiator recon robot

Larger robots, meanwhile, are proving more challenging. Carnegie Mellon’s 1-ton Gladiator recon robot testbed has longer range, can carry weapons, and is eventually intended to operate autonomously. Robots of this kind are important components of the $120+ billion Future Combat System program, which has come in for sustained criticism of late.

The Pentagon is working to develop the production base for robotics, partly through industry events like the Joint Robotics Program Working Group, but also via mentor-protege programs aimed at matching the small, young companies that pervade the orobtics industry with large, experienced military contractors (i.e. Lawrenceville’s re2 with Textron, Kuchera Defense systems with Raytheon).

In order to crack the difficult problem of autonomous ground navigation, meanwhile, DARPA’s Grand Challenge race takes a leaf from the private X-Prize by offering $2 million to the team whose driverless racer can complete the 175-mile desert course in under 10 hours and come in first. No team came close to finishing the first Grand Challenge in 2004, but the Oct. 8, 2005 event has 40 hopefuls (and produced some winners!).

UPDATE: The US government will spend about $1.7 billion on ground-based military robots between fiscal 2006 and 2012, said Bill Thomasmeyer, head of the National Center for Defense Robotics, a congressionally funded consortium of 160 companies. See AP report.

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