Oshkosh Defense [OSK] continues to work with Marines using its TerraMax cargo unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) technology to test concepts of operation and tactics, techniques and procedures, officials said.
The Cargo UGV is being put through its paces by Marines at a private Pennsylvania test facility, said Program Manager Marine Capt. Warren Watts, at a recent conference in Washington, D.C. Marines will be trained on the system and provide feedback on how the technology performs in a tactical environment.
The Marines are considering autonomous vehicles for a variety of jobs, from logistics convoys to route clearance.
Unmanned ground vehicle technologies have come to the fore over the past decade, closing in on 2015, the year Congress, in 2001, mandated that one-third of military ground vehicles be unmanned.
The Oshkosh Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR) vehicle in wide use by the Marines is equipped with Oshkosh’s TerraMax UGV technology that potentially would increase the driver’s situational awareness and reduce warfighter’s exposure to attack.
“We are excited to be getting this technology into the hands of the Marines,” said John Beck chief unmanned systems engineer for Oshkosh Corp.
TerraMax cargo UGV has already been through two limited technical assessments earlier this year that assessed such things as the capability of the autonomous system, how it avoided obstacles and stayed in lanes, Beck said.
TerraMax is a kit that is tightly integrated to the vehicle, Beck said. “We want minimum visual signature.” It’s important to hide sensors in the truck bodywork so it doesn’t look very different from the vehicles without the autonomous system. The design now includes radars for 360 degree coverage to be able to detect and avoid nearby obstacles or people.
Oshkosh Defense and the Army Tank Automotive Research Development Engineering Center (TARDEC) worked on a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement signed in 2008, said Jeff Naschem who works on unmanned systems at the Naval Sea System Command’s Dahlgren Div. The three-year effort was in refining technology for the operation of unmanned ground vehicles in convoy missions in real-world environments (Defense Daily, Jan. 27, 2009).
The TerraMax technology also participated in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s great robotic vehicle event in the desert in 2004 and 2005 called the Grand Challenge, and again in the 2007 Urban Challenge event.
The kit was designed to be scaled to size for other vehicles, including those built by other manufacturers, Beck said.
The TerraMax software can do such things as geo-tag images with a GPS position. The location is there in a video log, so the next time the truck drives through the same area, an operator can look at a live video feed as well as the feed made earlier.
The program is sponsored by the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory and the Joint Robotics Enterprise Robotics Technology Consortium.