By Matthew Cox
Army maneuver officials are hoping that a consortium of experts inwards non-military robotics tin detect novel ways for fight units to defeat the enemy, peculiarly inwards dense urban terrain. The Army's Capabilities Development too Integration Directorate, or CDID, at Fort Benning, Georgia, latterly partnered amongst the National Advanced Mobility Consortium to bear an outcome-based conception workshop -- an approach to challenges that has been "proven inwards the commercial manufacture sector but never potentially used inwards a partnership amongst the armed forces to larn afterwards roughly of the military's problems," according to Col. Tom Nelson, the caput of CDID's Robotics Requirement Division.
The consortium latterly had discussions amongst diverse groups, such equally soldiers from tertiary Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment; Army captains from the Maneuver Captains Career Course; too Training too Doctrine Command officials representing Army infantry, armor too Stryker brigade fight teams.
Between straightaway too April, the consortium volition take in tactical problems too potential solutions involving robotics too autonomous systems, Nelson said.
Army officials are hopeful that the grouping tin assist railroad train a solution that tin last used for precision appointment inwards closed urban terrain, for dealing amongst enemy forces that cover amid the population inwards large cities.
"I similar to role the example, you lot can't blow upward a goose egg code to kill a mailbox," said Don Sando, manager of CDID.
"How exercise you lot move afterwards that mailbox, or that private or pocket-size unit of measurement that is taking it upon themselves to cover too protect themselves inwards an environs that they know you lot are going to accept difficulty going after," he said.
The Army, he said, thinks robotics tin assist soldiers exercise simply that.
"In an ideal world, he said, "we tin arrive where it is real affordable too your mission payload is either a riot-control agent or roughly variety of concussion or, on the high-end, roughly variety of lethal termination ... delivered past times a robotic too autonomous arrangement nether the command of a soldier."
Another work the grouping wants to move afterwards is how to to a greater extent than effectively supply fight leaders amongst a more-defined, "common operating picture" of the battlefield, Nelson said.
"We mean value that robotic too autonomous volition allow us to exercise that inwards a means that nosotros haven't been able to exercise inwards the past," Nelson said.
"If you lot mean value nearly a battalion lookout adult man platoon on a concealment trace of piece of work -- how tin a robotic too autonomous arrangement assist inwards producing situational awareness too thus feeding that [to soldiers] thus they run into things on the battlefield? ... How does that move something that a determination maker tin use?"
The consortium volition plough over off to operate the work too hopes to introduce either prototypes or white papers describing solutions during the National Defense Industry Association's National Robotic Conference inwards April, Army officials said.
"It's simply an chance to assist us await at the work differently, too they may come upward up amongst the same answers that nosotros accept been looking at for years ... but I suspect that they may come upward at it a lilliputian differently," Sando said.
In the past, the Army has gone to manufacture amongst a work too said, "here is variety of what nosotros mean value is a means to solve that work amongst an [unmanned aerial system] or a dry reason robot," Nelson said.
"We are non providing that to them. All they desire at this signal is the work too the information that helps define that problem. So hopefully they tin come upward up amongst something that hasn't been looked at before."
-- Matthew Cox tin last reached at matthew.cox@military.com.
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