Army Prepares 'Robo-Soldier' for Iraq
KFMBTV, San Diego
01-22-05 at 1:46PM
The rain is turning to snow on a blustery January morning, and all
the men gathered in a parking lot here surely would prefer to be
inside. But the weather couldn't matter less to the robotic
sharpshooter they are here to watch as it splashes through puddles,
the barrel of its machine gun pointing the way like Pinocchio's
nose.
The Army is preparing to send 18 of these remote-controlled robotic
warriors to fight in Iraq beginning in March or April.
Made by a small Massachusetts company, the SWORDS, short for
Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems, will
be the first armed robotic vehicles to see combat, years ahead of
the larger Future Combat System vehicles currently under
development by big defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and
General Dynamics Corp.
It's easy to humanize the SWORDS (a tendency robotics researchers
say is only human) as it moves out of the flashy lobby of an office
building and into the cold with nary a shiver.
Military officials like to compare the roughly three-foot-high
robots favorably to human soldiers: They don't need to be trained,
fed or clothed. They can be boxed up and warehoused between wars.
They never complain. And there are no letters to write home if they
meet their demise in battle.
But officials are quick to point out that these are not the
autonomous killer robots of science fiction. A SWORDS robot shoots
only when its human operator presses a button after identifying a
target on video shot by the robot's cameras.
"The only difference is that his weapon is not at his shoulder,
it's up to half a mile a way," said Bob Quinn, general manager of
Talon robots for Foster-Miller Inc., the Waltham, Mass., company
that makes the SWORDS. As one Marine fresh out of boot camp told
Quinn upon seeing the robot: "This is my invisibility cloak."
Quinn said it was a "bootstrap development process" to convert a
Talon robot, which has been in military service since 2000, from
its main mission _ defusing roadside bombs in Iraq_ into the
gunslinging SWORDS.
It was a joint development process between the Army and
Foster-Miller, a robotics firm bought in November by QinetiQ Group
PLC, which is a partnership between the British Ministry of Defence
and the Washington holding company The Carlyle Group.
Army officials and employees of the robotics firm heard from
soldiers "who said 'My brothers are being killed out here. We love
the EOD (explosive ordnance disposal), but let's put some weapons
on it,'" said Quinn.
Working with soldiers and engineers at Picatinny Arsenal in New
Jersey, it took just six months and only about $2 million in
development money to outfit a Talon with weapons, according to
Quinn and Anthony Sebasto, a technology manager at Picatinny.
The Talon had already proven itself to be pretty rugged. One was
blown off the roof of a Humvee and into a nearby river by a
roadside bomb in Iraq. Soldiers simply opened its shrapnel-pocked
control unit and drove the robot out of the river, according to
Quinn.
The $200,000, armed version will carry standard-issue Squad
Automatic Weapons, either the M249, which fires 5.56-millimeter
rounds at a rate of 750 per minute, or the M240, which can fire
about 700 to 1,000 7.62-millimeter rounds per minute. The SWORDS
can fire about 300 rounds using the M240 and about 350 rounds using
the M249 before needing to reload.
All its optics equipment _ the four cameras, night vision and zoom
lenses _ were already in the Army's inventory.
"It's important to stress that not everything has to be super high
tech," said Sebasto. "You can integrate existing componentry and
create a revolutionary capability."
The SWORDS in the parking lot at the headquarters of the cable news
station CNBC had just finished showing off for the cameras,
climbing stairs, scooting between cubicles, even broadcasting some
of its video on the air.
Its developers say its tracks, like those on a tank, can overcome
rock piles and barbed wire, though it needs a ride to travel faster
than 4 mph.
Running on lithium ion batteries, it can operate for 1 to 4 hours
at a time, depending on the mission. Operators work the robot using
a 30-pound control unit which has two joysticks, a handful of
buttons and a video screen. Quinn says that may eventually be
replaced by a "Gameboy" type of controller hooked up to virtual
reality goggles.
The Army has been testing it over the past year at Picatinny and
the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland to ensure it won't
malfunction and can stand up to radio jammers and other
countermeasures. (Sebasto wouldn't comment on what happens if the
robot and its controller fall into enemy hands.)
Its developers say the SWORDS not only allows its operators to fire
at enemies without exposing themselves to return fire, but also can
make them more accurate.
A typical soldier who could hit a target the size of a basketball
from 300 meters away could hit a target the size of a nickel with
the SWORDS, according Quinn.
The better accuracy stems largely from the fact that its gun is
mounted on a stable platform and fired electronically, rather than
by a soldier's hands, according to Staff Sgt. Santiago Tordillos of
the EOD Technology Directorate at Picatinny. Gone are such issues
as trigger recoil, anticipation problems, and pausing the breathing
cycle while aiming a weapon.
"It eliminates the majority of shooting errors you would have,"
said Tordillos.
Chances are good the SWORDS will get even more deadly in the
future. It has been tested with the larger .50 caliber machine guns
as well as rocket and grenade launchers _ even an experimental
weapon made by the Australian company Metal Storm LLC that packs
multiple rocket rounds into a single barrel, allowing for much more
rapid firing.
"We've fired 70 shots at Picatinny and we were 70 for 70 hitting
the bull's-eye," said Sebasto, boasting of the arsenal's success
with a Vietnam-era rocket launcher mounted on a SWORDS.
There are bound to be many eyes watching SWORDS as it heads to
battle. Its tracks will one day be followed by the larger vehicles
of the Future Combat System, such as six-wheel-drive MULE under
development by Lockheed Martin, a 2.5-ton vehicle with motors in
each wheel hub to make it more likely to survive.
The Pentagon's research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, also recently awarded contracts to aid research of robots
that one day could be dropped into combat from airplanes and others
meant to scale walls using electrostatic energy _ also known as
"static cling."
Many of the vehicles being developed for the FCS will have some
autonomy, meaning they'll navigate rough terrain, avoid obstacles
and make decisions about certain tasks on their own.
They may be able to offer cues to their operators when potential
foes are near, but it's doubtful any of them will ever be allowed
to make the decision to pull the trigger, according to Jim Lowrie,
president of Perceptek Inc., a Littleton, Colo., firm that is
developing robotics systems for the military.
"For the foreseeable future, there always will be a person in the
loop who makes the decision on friend or foe. That's a hard problem
to determine autonomously," said Lowrie.