by AUVSI News 

Although the final day of Unmanned Systems Defense was dedicated to ground robotics programming, speakers stressed leveraging technologies across the domains and working together to speak as one voice to educate the public about unmanned systems. 



Dr. Paul Rogers, the director of the U.S. Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, said the ground domain is the most difficult one to tackle, because currently, it takes a more sophisticated enemy to have conflicts in maritime, space or air. For instance, he said a child that gets paid $100 by an enemy to toss an explosive device at soldiers could cost the military millions of dollars and years of testing and training to counteract. 



“What makes it so difficult are the dilemmas that the human element offers you,” he said.



The key to tackling this issue, he said, is to leverage the technology from the three other domains and also to be able to rapidly acquire technology that has been put through the paces with soldiers. 



He said the Army is currently emphasizing a capability-focused investment method of acquisition instead of a technology-focused investment. He would like to see a technology integration method on platforms similar to how a smartphone can get updated with new apps. This will help tackle difficult autonomy issues with ground vehicles, like towing an articulated trailer or performing a K-turn, and allow the military to field behaviors as they become available. 



The U.S. Army is moving closer to fielding new generations of robotic systems to replace the hodgepodge of systems it bought for rapid deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Scott Davis, program executive officer for Combat Support and Combat Service Support.



The Man Transportation Robotic System Increment II, or MTRS-II system, a bomb-fighting ground robot, will be among the first, with acquisition beginning in the second quarter of next year. It will be followed not far behind by the Common Robotic System-Individual (CRS-I), which should have a request for proposals out by the first quarter of 2017.



MTRS-II will be “opening us up for many different types of payload platforms,” Davis said, and the CRS-I “I think will be a very important program to sort of push this robotic integration into formations for us.”



The Army is continuing to use and maintain its legacy systems, including iRobot’s SUGV, FirstLook, and PackBot and QinetiQ North America’s Talon, but “a lot of these serve now as bridging solutions until we can get some of these programs of record,” Davis said.



Other systems on the way include S-MET, the Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport, which could come in multiple sizes and carry a variety of loads for troops, as well as serving as a power source and a reconnaissance platform.



That is expected to get funding between 2018 to 2020, with the engineering and manufacturing development following shortly after, from 2019 to 2022, he said.



Leader-follower capability for vehicles is also in the works and is expected to lead to systems entering the EMD phase from 2018 to 2020.



These efforts, and others, will be captured by the Army’s new robotics strategy, a document expected to be published early next year. The document is seeking feasible objectives for soldiers in the near term, which would include leader-follower technology, said retired Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley, principle robotics consultant with JHNA Inc.



Mid-term objectives include greater automation, cargo delivery and robotic teammates, while long-term objectives include manned and unmanned teaming and more natural soldier-robot communication.



As the Army moves into the future, it needs to decide how much human-machine collaboration it wants, he said.



“In order to get that, we have to make some significant investment now that’s far ahead of what we’re investing currently,” Dooley said.




Navy Plans



Frank Kelley, the Navy’s new deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for unmanned systems, spoke just two days after his new post was announced by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus on AUVSI’s stage.



He joked that he attended the first day of Unmanned Systems Defense, “because the secretary was going to speak, and I wanted to find out what my new job was.”



In reality, Kelley said his new position is intended to streamline existing Navy efforts in unmanned systems and push for transformative technologies.



“We’re really going to transform the way the Navy fights in the future,” he said. “The only limit to what this new technology can do for us is our imagination.”



The new deputy secretary’s shop is small, with only five employees, he said.



“I almost feel like a startup, if I knew what a startup felt like,” Kelley said.



He said unmanned systems are not going to replace sailors or Marines, but will instead expand their capabilities. Industry participation will be crucial to make this happen.



“Industry collaboration is going to be absolutely critical. There is no shortage of work today, and we’re only going to be successful if we’re all working together,” Kelley said. “So I am immensely excited about this opportunity.”




Speaking With One Voice



Dan Hill, president of Ervin Hill Strategy and an expert on best practices on leading organizations through periods of change, stressed the importance of educating key stakeholders on the benefits of unmanned technology. 



He recently reviewed The Atlantic magazine’s top 50 technological breakthroughs since the wheel, which included things like penicillin. 



“You have 12 of the greatest innovations in history employed in the field that you do. …” he said, including items like photography and electricity. “The scale and scope of this is so massive, it can be mindboggling. … You are truly cutting edge, which carries with it a lot of responsibility.”



In social media conversations with his friends, he said more of them were aware of the possible fears associated with unmanned systems versus their potential applications. He said the entire community bears the burden of educating public stakeholders, and not just Congress, so they have good information with which to form opinions.



“In your world that you live in, you’re surrounding yourselves with people who get it … but there are a lot of people … who don’t get it, and you are responsible, in many ways, that those stakeholders do get it.”



Hill said he has formulated a crisis management plan that allows him to determine the impact of an incident in an industry. The formula involves three categories — the reputation of the institution, the nature of the incident and what the impact was. 



“The reputation of an industry matters way more than I realized,” he said. 



He noted that AUVSI serves as a way for the community to foster a single, educated voice. Without that voice, the void will be filled by conspiracy theorists and the like. 



“I’m imploring you to be the ones who do it.”

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