Robotics is a fundamental enabling technology required to meet the U.S. Army's vision to be a strategically responsive force capable of domination across the entire spectrum of conflict. The U. S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) Tank Automotive Research, Development & Engineering Center (TARDEC), in
partnership with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, is developing a leader-follower capability for Future Combat Systems. The Robotic Follower Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) utilizes a manned leader to provide a highlevel proofing of the follower's path, which operates with minimal user intervention. This paper will give a programmatic overview and discuss both the technical approach and operational experimentation results obtained during testing
conducted at Ft. Bliss, New Mexico in February-March 2003.
Robotics is one of the fundamental enabling technologies required to meet the U. S. Army's vision to be a strategically responsive force capable of domination across the entire spectrum of conflict. The Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is poised to be the first component of this force to utilize robotic or unmanned systems. The U. S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development & Engineering Center (TARDEC), in partnership with the U. S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has initiated an effort to develop a near-term robotics capability for FCS entitled the Robotic Follower Advanced Technology Demonstration program.
A robotic convoy consists of a lead vehicle and following vehicles. The lead vehicle is either manually driven or driven through teleoperation from a fixed base station or a mobile base station located in one of the convoy followers. The lead vehicle automatically maps the path it is driving using integrated global and local sensing and navigation systems, and transmits this information back to the following vehicles. The following vehicles use their own sensing, without human intervention, to follow the same path as the lead vehicle. This paper will discuss the technologies involved in robotic convoy, the capabilities achieved with this technology and future applications involving robotic convoy.
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