The Battle of Copehill Down: integrated robotic skills shoot out

Modelled on the US  DARPA Grand Challenge, which, after three rounds over six years, is now producing reliable robotic vehicle technologies, the UK competition of 13 months needs the robots to multi-task to acquire sufficient data so that their control station can identify four different threats — some of which are almost impossible for even experienced soldiers under certain conditions.

The teams have to create semi-autonomous robots that can:

• find a sniper

• find an improvised explosive device (IED),

• find a 4 x 4 vehicle with a gun on it

• find a group dressed in semi-military uniform carrying arms,

• get the information back to a two-man forward control station.

The robots need to negotiate the complexity of an urban environment to find the threats. Hazards include unfamiliar terrain and buildings, trees, near-invisible overhead wires and other urban clutter. Teams will earn points based on how many threats they locate in one hour, and how autonomous they are. So a  team will lose points if they use remote control to direct their vehicles at any stage of the trial.

To win the challenge trophy and the opportunity for lucrative MoD contracts, teams must integrate their autonomous mobile platform with a suite of sensors and data retrieval and analysis techniques.

"It's a new business model for us and it won't be the last of the new initiatives we will follow to engage with industry, SMEs, academics and schools to promote the requirements and needs of the MoD,'  Andy Wallace, leader of the Grand Challenge programme is reported saying. "We want to tap into innovations that maybe we haven't in the past so we observed DARPA's competition and  adapted it to what we and our people on operations need. We were conscious that we want to provide a depth to the challenge and we're under no illusion that it's difficult." 

"We are looking for technologies that are partially mature and would be integrated on a platform to make a solution. We're keeping up to speed with the teams and the sorts of technologies they're working on to see if they are capable of finding the threats. but we won't know until the finals how good they are," he added.

Out of 14 teams, six have won MoD funding, and six more are funding themselves with two are focusing on specific challenge elements rather than all the tasks. The teams  formed after the MoD  open day last year for all interested parties, and have  visited Copehill Down to see what the robots face.

London-based Barnard Microsystems with visual and thermal imaging                 Blue Bear UAV (Stellar team)
sensors onboard unmanned aircraft used to monitor oil and gas installations, opts for an aerial solution to the challenges laid down.
They will have two small quadrotors as sensor platforms use 12Mp cameras to generate image files of up to 4MB after JPEG compression, with data will be stored and downloaded only when the craft return to base. It would like to use IR imaging system with laser searchlight ,but costs are around £10,000.

The Silicon Valley Group — a consortium including Kingston and Reading Universities and Cumbria's Smith Engineering will  combine an aerial and  ground-based vehicle.  A tethered kite may give the elevation needed and a offer positioning control. Smith Engineering is supplying a MoonBuggy ground vehicle and GPS to be used for autonomous vehicle positioning. Strength of this consortium is image recognition software and the loan of a thermal imaging sensor.

The Stellar team of Bedfordshire-based Blue Bear System Research, Cranfield University, SELEX Sensors and Airborne Systems, Marshall SV Systems Design Group and TRW Conekt also offers a  combination of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) with thermal, optical  and possibly radar sensors on board and autonomous aircraft.

Middlesex University I-Spy team aerial approach is developing two very different air vehicles: a hover capable nano air vehicle ('150g mirror on the end of a stick') and a micro air vehicle working together to identify and locate the threats.

The  Locust team also plans to use two flying platforms. A 60cm dia, 10g net, hovering disc  with batteries and thermo-electric generator powered, transmits AV via a secure link to a soldier's PDA. The disc can fly pre-set patterns so is semi-autonomous and has anti-collision sensors. Cameras have automatic focusing and near IR capability.  The second platform is an aircraft with a 10in (25cm) wingspan which can fly 1.2km and return. It weighs just 38g and has flown successfully in crosswinds of up to 17mph (15 knots) capable of storing up to 4GB or transmit to PDA.

The Swarm Systems consortium has a gaggle of eight quadrotor micro air vehicles dubbed 'Owls" which can dart and hover like birds.  With sensors and a trio of 5MP  cameras, these flying machines, each weighing less than 1kg, will fly autonomously, guided by GPS and able to intercommunicate, will use wi-fi  for image transmission to the base station.

The consortium includes experts from Essex and Surrey universities, and has reconsidered on thermal imaging £10,000 at the start of the project, dropped to £3,000 during the project . "Every piece of technology we started to use has been  trumped by something new as the project has progressed — it all gets better, faster, lighter, cheaper," leader Stephen Crampton told The Engineer, and believes the short time frame of 13 months will help the MoD learn a lot as each team will be best at one or two areas while the winner will be the one that's done the most testing.

R&D firm Mindsheet also believes a large number of vehicles is the route take, but with the exception of a tethered aerial observation platform is developing a swarm of small autonomous ground vehicles. Each travelling at up to 30mph to avoid capture, will fan out across Copehill Down, following pre-designed courses mapped by GPS and with obstacle-avoidance sensors on board to prevent collisions.

Their whip aerials permit communication with the forward command post or, if the wi-fi connection isn't working, GPRS will be used. A threat detection system according to the pose and movement of people has been developed and currently works off-line, using thermal and video images to classify moving patterns and identify if they are deviationary.

The two hardest challenges will be to spot snipers and explosive devices, which could have any form of packaging.

Qinetiq's 66lb Zephyr UAV                                   

 Qinetiq's Coretex team, for example, hopes to draw on the                   company's vast experience in military technology. Its platform will
be a UAV with vertical take-off capability, a one-metre wingspan and long transient flight capability.  Unlike most UAVs it can be disposable if  needed being low cost and light enough to be carried by a soldier.

With less than three months to go before the final, the MoD's is impressed with all the teams' approaches. The Grand Challenge designed so there would be no constraint on people's development processes, allowing  free rein to their imagination, means the MoD is now having to   consider how we to offer opportunities to the teams with attractive technologies.

The  Watchkeeper UAV

Thales UK released photos of the new Watchkeeper UAV maiden flight in Northern Israel after permission to publish the pictures had been blocked for three weeks because of political considerations, according to industry press reports. The "fully autonomous" (including automatic takeoff and landing) unmanned aerial vehicle, is expected to assume reconnaissance and target acquisition duties for the British military by 2010, according to Thales.

The robo-platform comes equipped with day/night electro-optic sensors, laser-target designators, and advanced synthetic aperture radar. Information and images collected are transmitted to a network of mobile ground control stations and remote viewing terminals where operators can control missions. It's unarmed but does include a "de-icing capability."

Permission to publish the pictures had been blocked by the UK Defence Equipment & Support organisation since the April 16 maiden flight, according to Flightglobal.com, "due to sensitivities linked to local elections held across the UK on 1 May."

The 450kg Watchkeeper, based on the Elbit Hermes 450, will be built jointly Israeli  Elbit Systems and the French-owned Thales UK. Starting price of £15m has reportedly risen to £17m  and despite 2,100 lucrative jobs, a good portion of that money go offshore.

Sources: http://news.cnet.com/
http://www.theengineer.co.uk
http://technology.newscientist.com
Webs: http://www.barnardmicrosystems.com/
http://www.silicon-valley.co.uk/
www.kingston.ac.uk
www.reading.ac.uk
www.rcauk.com/pdf/Moonbuggy%20Catalogue%20vol1.pdf
http://www.challenge.mod.uk/teams/stellar_team.aspx
http://www.bluebearsystems.com/
http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/
http://www.selex-sas.com/
http://www.marshallsv.com/
http://www.conekt.net/aerospace-defence.html
http://www.middlesex.ac.uk/
http://www.challenge.mod.uk/teams/swarm_systems.aspx
http://www.mindsheet.com/
http://www.qinetiq.com/
http://www.thalesgroup.com/

Sources: http://digg.com/world_news/
http://www.shephard.co.uk