Progress Edition 2003: Innovation In The Ozarks
By Liam M. Truchard
News-Leader; Wire
Fort Leonard Wood, UMR and Boeing are redefining technology to work with soldiers.
Fort Leonard Wood — In a colorless, faceless building at Fort Leonard Wood, the Army's future is crawling along the floor.
The two objects look crude, but the devices resembling oversize radio-controlled vehicles are the latest and greatest robots the Army has at its disposal.
"They're ugly, but robots were never supposed to win a beauty contest," said David G. Knichel, a robotics technology systems analyst for the Department of Defense's Directorate of Combat Developments. He is based at the post, working with the Army's Maneuver Support Center.
"(The center) will have more robots in the field in 2006 than anyone else in the Army," he said.
The two unmanned vehicles — derivatives of URBOT (Urban Robot) and Matilda — are both prototypes, but functional. Their brethren are climbing through caves in Afghanistan and tunnels in Iraq, and clearing minefields in Bosnia.
They are also the pioneers in a movement that will radically alter the way the Army goes to war in the future. Unmanned, semiautonomous robots will make up one-third of the force's systems and help make the service smaller, lighter and easier to deploy.
But it's more than just adding computers and radio-controlled vehicles to the Army's mix of weaponry. It is a fundamental shift in thinking — altering the concept of a machine's role in the service from requiring an operator to one that works with a soldier.
It is also a shift in the way the Army deals with technology. The goal is to steer its development instead of applying it after creation and cut down on the time it takes to integrate emerging technology into the service.
Missouri is ground zero for those plans. At Fort Leonard Wood, University of Missouri-Rolla and the state have built the first of what officials hope will be a campus of tech centers on the post, bringing the military, academia and business into a closer working relationship.
Missouri will benefit in an even bigger way. The Boeing Co. has won a $14.9 billion contract to become the Army's Lead Systems Integrator — basically a general contractor in the development of the Army's future force. The company has announced it will headquarter its program — dubbed the Future Combat Systems — in St. Louis.
"And the Army has indicated it is going to co-locate in St. Louis," said Randy Harrison, communications manager of the FCS for Boeing. "It is going to be a very large, very long-term program and going to be a Missouri program."
Robots now
The Army has developed a series of ratings from 1 to 10 to gauge the level of autonomy of robots. Level 1 requires an operator. Level 5 is a machine that can follow another vehicle without assistance. Level 10, Knichel says, is "Rosie of the Jetsons."
Currently, nearly all robots in the service are Level 1 or 2, meaning a soldier operates the vehicle from another location.
"There are some in our field that have concerns about autonomous machines," he added. "The argument is, we don't have autonomous soldiers. Soldiers are always under the control of a sergeant. They don't act on their own. There are some that say we don't want to get to Level 10 — we want (robots to be) part of the team with a sergeant in charge."
Fort Leonard Wood is where the designs and prototypes get their real world tryouts.
To pinpoint how far a system has advanced, the Army again uses a scale, this one called the Technology Readiness Level. Knichel says TRL 1 "is a mad scientist who has got an idea in a lab.” TRL 9 means the system is ready to go and can be put in the hands of soldiers.
"Here in the robotics division, we bring in technology that's about TRL 5 or 6, preferably 6," he said. "We found things lower than 6, they operate really good on the professor's desk or they work on the lab floor when it's 72 degrees and 55 percent humidity. But you take it out where it's a little dirty, a little muddy, and soldiers actually have to operate it; it's just not ready."
Besides seeing if the robots actually work, it gives designers a chance for modifications to be developed before a system is deployed.
For instance, batteries on the cave-climbing robots were underneath the machine, making them difficult to change in the field. After its workout, the batteries were moved to the top of the rovers — and were changed to be the same as the ones soldiers were already carrying for communication devices.
Another robot being used by the center includes the Abrams Panther, an anti-mine tank that is clearing minefields in Bosnia.
Few of Fort Leonard Wood's robots are at the post right now. Having shown they can work, the Army has decided to put the prototypes into action now.
"If a measure of success is the Army taking things away and moving it to combat zones and theaters of operation like Centcom (Iraq and Afghanistan), then I guess we're successful," Knichel said. "Is it perfect? No, it's too heavy, it doesn't run long enough, and it doesn't have enough sensors. But remember, its a prototype, filling a temporary gap."
The future force
The URBOT, Matilda and the other pioneering robots working out at Fort Leonard Wood are the tip of the unmanned iceberg.
But those are still based on a soldier being involved in its operation. In the future, robots will be asked to be more like a team member, operating with some form of independence.
One being tested is a decontamination robot that will detect chemical agents on vehicles and automatically apply a cleaner, without the need for an operator. Currently, that job has to be done by soldiers.
Robots will also be asked to communicate with each other, in some cases directing other robots to do tasks.
A test of that concept will come next summer at Fort Leonard Wood. That's when an unmanned aerial vehicle — or UAV — will fly over the post, looking for land mines. On the ground will be three other robots. The hope is that the UAV will detect the mines, instruct the land-based robots to check the area and have those machines mark any mines that are found.
"It doesn't do everything. It's very specific, searching for land mines," Knichel said. "But we're starting to demonstrate some of that advanced autonomous technology."
In the pipeline are robots that will follow a lead vehicle down highways without the need of drivers. Also in the works are robotic "mules" that will automatically follow soldiers, carrying their equipment.
On the drawing board are machine sentries that will patrol high-priority installations and small, lightweight UAVs that can be carried into remote locations on backpacks and launched to see over hills.
Further down the line are robots with fighting capabilities that can go in and support combat troops without being given commands — mechanical wingmen.
The units will be linked to soldiers — an integral component in a "system of systems" giving troops what Knichel calls "situational awareness" and cutting down on the lack of information transfer that happens during "the fog of war," Harrison said.
A new direction
Why do it with robots? To keep soldiers alive — and make them better.
"We're not trying to eliminate the soldier — we're trying to give the soldier capability to do more things," Knichel said. "We're not going to get any more soldiers. But we're asking the soldier to do more."
Harrison noted that robots also cut costs. Without requirements to support human life in unmanned vehicles, he said, its costs about 30 percent to do the same job.
"You literally save humans for missions where they are absolutely needed," he said.
Unlike years past, however, the Army is not looking for new platforms — tanks, weapons or vehicles — to work with. Instead, it's looking for technology.
"Intelligence is the heart of the Future Combat Systems," Harrison said. "It's information and networked-based, rather than platform-based.
"And the soldier is a node in that system."
To do that, the Army, the government's Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA), Boeing and its partners, universities and others will work together to identify promising technology and to guide its development — be it sensors, computers, cellular communications, electronics, composite materials or whatever can be dreamed up and made real.
The goal is to produce a future force that will be quicker, lighter and smaller than today's fighting units — yet be able to control more space and risk fewer lives.
"A brigade today is about 5,000 soldiers. A brigade of tomorrow is about 2,400 soldiers," Knichel said. "Their battles space — the area they have to control — is doubled. You take a force of 2,400 and make it responsible for an area essentially the size of Pennsylvania. How you do that is you are enabled with systems that provide situational awareness."
In at the start
It's fair to say Missouri business leaders and universities have an awareness of the situation. And they are taking steps to be at the forefront of the technology revolution in the military.
UMR is already hands-on. The university has developed its own robotic devices and unmanned vehicles, including one called the Land Tamer. It has also developed an obscuring system — a smoke screen for the battlefield, said Stephen H. Tupper, UMR's Liaison to Fort Leonard Wood.
The soy-based, environmentally friendly smoke is now part of the Army's M-56 Coyote, an unmanned Humvee that delivers the obscurant, Knichel said.
But aside from platforms, UMR is putting energy and resources into the tech park, which leaders hope will be one of the nerve centers of the new collaborative effort.
"We're looking for more opportunities for technology transfer," Tupper said. "After the military thinks of it or the university thinks of it, we then try to get it commercialized."
And not just robotic technology. The tech center is also working to develop other skills with the center, such as geo-spacial information systems — mapping — and environmental sciences.
Tupper said there are a "good variety" of defense contractors and small businesses using space at the tech center.
Some have "virtual offices" at the center and utilize office space when at the post on business, said Ron Selfors, project director at the Missouri Enterprise Business Assistance Center.
The tech park concept — targeted for 62 acres but with the ability to grow to 250 — would be a boon to the regional economy, Selfors said.
"We can have 15 buildings and as many as 1,000 jobs," he said. "It would be an economic engine that would drive development."
The park would get a boost when Boeing sets up in St. Louis as expected.
By the end of this year, 150 new jobs are expected at the Boeing location, growing to about 500 by the end of 2004, according to releases from Boeing.
Harrison noted that the new direction the Army is going represents a dramatic change for the service and for industry.
"It's a big cultural change," he said, noting that companies previously developed systems and platforms, then sold it to the military.
"Now we will bring the best of industry and best of nonmilitary research to the Army, wherever it comes from."
To prove the point, Harrison noted that two-thirds of the $14.9 billion contract Boeing signed will end up in the bank accounts of its partners in the program.
Even with the commitment, the change will not happen overnight. Or in the next several years.
In May, Boeing was given the green light to enter into the "System Development and Demonstration Phase."
Harrison said that will last until around 2008-2010. If all goes well, the FCS will move to "Initial Production and Initial Operation Capability" by the end of the decade.
By then, said Knichel, the Army should be guiding technology instead of the other way around, leading to a far more advanced Army around 2020.
"You are making choices of research and development, not picking what someone else did and making it fit your needs," he said. "We're letting the requirements of the future force drive the technology."
