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6 Vehicle Technology Directorate and Autonomous Systems Enterprise
Pages 82-102

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From page 82...
... The Vehicle Technology Directorate (VTD) was reviewed by the Panel on Air and Ground Vehicle Technology at its meeting on June 25-27, 2012.
From page 83...
... Therefore, VTD management should refocus attention on capability concepts as a systems methodology to align its research portfolio to meet critical Army needs and requirements. Construction at Aberdeen Proving Ground of a 35,500 square foot building to house VTD personnel and corresponding research laboratories as required by the 2005 BRAC has been largely completed.
From page 84...
... VTD has need for high-temperature materials in many if not all of its capability concepts. Although it should be involved in high-temperature materials research given the serious flaws in such work conducted by the NASA Glenn Center for VTD, VTD has determined that other work is of higher priority and therefore has appropriately postponed developing a high-temperature materials program.
From page 85...
... Low Speed Wind Tunnel Because many of the Army's needs involve air and ground vehicles at relatively low speeds, this facility fills a VTD requirement. However, plans to test the hover flight conditions and slow forward flight of micro air vehicles in this wind tunnel are not likely to yield realistic results.
From page 86...
... Elements of this lack of a VTD plan have been evident for several years; however, the move to the new building with the new research facilities, the complete change in management, and the large number of new researchers make the lack of a plan critical at this time. Capability concepts are a tool to help with this effort, and it is extremely disappointing that VTD seems not to be using these concepts.
From page 87...
... Overall Technical Quality of the Work Basic VTD Research Quality The BRAC decision to consolidate VTD at Aberdeen, coupled with VTD management's focus on Army needs, has increased the quality of the VTD research portfolio. In 2010 the establishment of eight capability concepts that embody the technical breakthroughs needed to meet critical future Army needs was a major step toward focusing and upgrading VTD research.
From page 88...
... Perhaps ARL's most important contribution has been the use of the Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) and Robotics CTAs to maximally leverage high-caliber research and talent across the United States, which is a significant accomplishment.
From page 89...
... ARL's role in developing the necessary 6.1- and 6.2-type technology for the future is extremely important to the success of Army systems. Alignment of the ARL robotics enterprise and overall Army strategic plans is not clear.
From page 90...
... Work in this area should be included in the portfolio. In terms of impact on Army programs, ARL should consider the need to capture lessons learned with respect to IEDs, understand the ideal distance of soldier-robot separation, and identify what can be learned about UAVs that is applicable to unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs)
From page 91...
... • An element of the systems approach is termed "capability concepts." For example, the descrip tion of the MAST goals almost completely reflects a capability concept. That is, the MAST robot will weigh 200 grams, be utilized in the last 100 meters, and work for three different scenarios.
From page 92...
... Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology The goals of the MAST program include reducing the sensor size, weight, and power by a factor of 100. The hair inertial sensor is projected to be 1.5 mm × 1.5 mm, which is approximately 4 times smaller than the conventional microelectromechanical system (MEMS)
From page 93...
... The team has made clear progress in all areas. Although sensing was not addressed in the presentation, the following topics were addressed in some detail: • Semantic understanding of static areas: terrain and object classification, which works very well over large data sets; • Semantic understanding of dynamic areas: activity recognition, which appears to work reason ably well on small data sets and a restricted set of activities; and • Distributed and collaborative perception: multiple robots, and robots and people, which is a work in progress.
From page 94...
... Advancements and Accomplishments  The robotics enterprise is addressing some critical subproblems whose solutions are necessary for increasing robot intelligence (e.g., mapping, path planning, machine learning, robot control, and architectures for cognition)
From page 95...
... Overall Technical Quality  The robotics enterprise is grappling with difficult problems that have been around for a long time. The enterprise's approach is to pursue many different algorithms for these problems, and then at some point in the future decide which is most beneficial for a given Army application.
From page 96...
... Using machine learning to tackle the challenging problems in robot intelligence is a good approach with many avenues for fruitful study. The advocated approach for control learning, which begins with a model for nominal control and then applies machine learning to optimize the control parameters, is an appropriate way of applying machine learning.
From page 97...
... However, the research needs to do a better job in general of explicitly addressing the size, weight, power, sensing, and computational constraints. The software developed for this demonstration requires robots at the capability level of the Robotics CTA, rather than the MAST CTA.
From page 98...
... As is often the case in large organizations, there are stovepipes that should be better connected. Coordination and knowledge sharing should be improved within the CTAs and between the MAST CTA and the Robotics CTA.
From page 99...
... Overall Technical Quality Work on robot reliability and on dynamics of human-robot teaming and RIVET2 simulation software is notable. The ARL programs have embraced the noble goal of utilizing robots as trusted team members rather than as tools, which is even more challenging than the goal of fully autonomous robotic operation.
From page 100...
... The researchers should more clearly articulate and justify their work -- particularly with regard to scenarios for the Robotics CTA. The locomotion researchers should develop joint experiments with other researchers in the ARL, such as the HRI researchers.
From page 101...
... Flapping may not be the best use of the limited power available on nano-scale air vehicles. Comparing flapping to rotary wing flight might be an appropriate research task that probably should be done, but it might be easier to devote a similar effort to developing rotary winged nano-scale air vehicles.
From page 102...
... Overall Technical Quality ARL is to be complimented for the range of robotics sizes and the different types of mobility devices in its robot research portfolio. Also, the research portfolio is well balanced in terms of analysis and physics-based modeling and experiments.


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