Tag: U.S. Army

Jedi Soliders: Army Working on Drone Hoverbike

The hoverbike, shown tethered for safety reasons, supports nearly 600 pounds, enough for soldiers and their heavy gear. (Photo: Malloy Aeronautics)

Hover technology has long been depicted in movies like Star Wars and Back to the Future. Now the U.S. Army is teaming up with two companies to develop hoverbike technology — a cross between a motorcycle and a drone.

SURVICE Engineering Co., a Belcamp, Md.-based defense firm, and U.K.-based Malloy Aeronautics, an aeronautical engineering firm, are developing the Hoverbike technology for the U.S. Department of Defense as part of an ongoing research and development contract with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. The Hoverbike is being developed to operate as a new class of Tactical Reconnaissance Vehicle (TRV).

The makers, Malloy Aeronautics, have a vision for the hoverbike beyond defense. “Its low cost and practical size lends itself to search and rescue, precision farming and cattle mustering, first-responder emergency services and cargo insertion of up to 120 kg (265 lbs) into confined spaces. We believe it would be ideal for ski and mountain rescue, airborne logistics and time-sensitive personnel insertion/extraction during major disasters,” the website says.

As part of this strategic alliance, UK-based Malloy Aeronautics has established a U.S. office in Belcamp adjacent to Aberdeen Proving Ground to complete work on the Hoverbike. A model of the Hoverbike is on display at the Paris Air Show, which runs through June 21.

Malloy’s Drone3, a prototype of the hoverbike, was funded through a kickstarter campaign and is now being sold. According to Malloy’s website, “A Californian customer of ours (Steve Mandel) received his Kickstarter Drone3 in February this year and emailed us yesterday with a photo of his new Drone3 in flight — with a new test pilot.” (Photo courtesy of Steve Mandel)

With about 400 employees, SURVICE is a specialty engineering firm that has been providing R&D support for the U.S. Department of Defense and other industry sectors for more than 30 years.

Formed in 2012, Malloy Aeronautics is an entrepreneurial aerospace company that develops, markets, and sells drones and Hoverbike technology to commercial and military markets.

The video below shows the second-generation Hoverbike in a unmanned static hover. While makers say it’s capable of lifting a person of at least 100 kg, for safety and legal reasons the vehicle is being tested as a drone.

“Establishing an office in Maryland was a clear business decision,” said Chris Malloy, managing director of Malloy Aeronautics. “The proximity to the Army Research Laboratory and U.S. defense decision makers, access to the world-class facilities through the laboratory’s Open Campus initiative, and the co-location with our strategic business partner, SURVICE Engineering, were all factors in favor of Maryland as the best choice for Malloy Aeronautics.”

“Maryland companies do a tremendous amount of research and development (R&D) for the U.S. military,” said Jeff Foulk, SURVICE chief executive officer. “If there is a new military technology being developed, there’s a good chance that some aspect was designed, built or tested in Maryland.”

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory is the nation’s premier laboratory for land forces and is part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to develop technology and engineering solutions for America’s Soldiers. RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command.

June 25, 2015
Device Tracks Soldiers’ Movements without GPS

The Warfighter Integrated Navigation System, center, uses inertial systems to determine a Soldier’s location in the absence of a GPS signal. On the left, a smaller version of WINS. On the right, the Defense Advanced GPS Receiver, which soldiers use now for position, navigation, and timing. All three devices were on display at the DOD Lab Day, May 14, at the Pentagon. (Photo: U.S. Army/C. Todd Lopez)

When GPS satellites can’t be seen due to dense jungle canopy, or they are blocked due to enemy interference, soldiers will still be able to track their location digitally using the Warfighter Integrated Navigation System (WINS), a device now under development at the Communications Electronics Research Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC).

During the U.S. Department of Defense Lab Day held May 14 at the Pentagon, CERDEC researcher Osie A. David explained how the technology behind WINS will one day be transitioned to an Army program manager to bring assured navigational capability to soldiers.

The WINS is a device small enough to carry in a soldier’s cargo pocket, about half the size of a pack of cigarettes.

“It’s got a number of inertial sensors, such as a pedometer and an accelerometer, things you will find on your cell phone but of a higher quality,” he said. “Even if the enemy is denying you GPS or the terrain is, you can still get known location on here so it will show up on your Nett Warrior device or your command and control system.” The Nett Warrior is an integrated dismounted situational awareness and mission command system for use by leaders during combat operations, using advanced navigation and information sharing capabilities to allow for faster and more accurate decisions during the tactical fight.

The Nett Warrior

Those inertial sensors will calculate an offset from the last-known location using footsteps taken, speed, acceleration and time, for instance. The device even has way to measure altitude. “It’s got a pressure reader so it knows if you are on the third floor or first floor of a building,” David said.

The WINS isn’t perfect. As time goes by without a new GPS signal, its estimate of current location will degrade. But the device provides for the user an estimate of its own miscalculation. “After a time, it’ll show you a circle radius for the error range,” he said. “It’s still better than having no GPS at all.”

David said knowing location is everything in combat, and the WINS, or a follow-on system that uses technology from WINS, will make sure that soldiers have that no matter what happens to GPS.

“Say we go to Southeast Asia and I’m in the middle of the jungle. There are not a lot of good landmarks. I’m navigating around and I lose the GPS because with the triple-canopy jungle, the GPS can’t penetrate that. I don’t know where I am on the map, so I’m in a bad situation. If I want to know exactly where I am so I can call for reinforcements or resupply, WINS is going to give me my location on a map, no matter where I am.”

David said CERDEC is still working on issues like where soldiers should wear the device. He also said that he expects the engineering specifications for WINS to be transferred to Program Executive Office, Intelligence and Electronic Warfare & Sensors by 2017. It will be inside an Army program manager’s office, not an Army lab, that WINS or the technology it contains will be made available to soldiers.

The Soldier Power Manager sits on top of a conformal battery. Allowing multiple devices to be connected to a battery, it reports battery usage, power remaining, and power usage by connected devices. (Photo: U.S. Army/C. Todd Lopez)

David also had with him a device he called the Soldier Power Manager. The power manager was connected to a “conformal battery,” which was also developed at CERDEC in conjunction with industry. The conformal battery is flexible and slips easily into a soldier’s tactical vest without being uncomfortable due to stiffness. It wraps around a soldier’s torso.

The power manager allows multiple devices to connect to a battery, and provides a display saying how much power is left in the battery, what devices are connected to the battery, and how much power each device is using.

“It lets you know how much energy is left and what is plugged in,” David said. He said one advancement the lab has made on the system is to transfer the user interface to a Nett Warrior device, so soldiers can see it on that screen.

“It lets you see the total power left on the device and how much energy each device is pulling, so you can make a decision about what device to pull — when energy gets low — to make sure you have enough power to meet mission needs. We have sort of integrated the energy component with the information to make better choices in the battlefield in terms of operational energy.”

June 9, 2015
U.S. Army Interested in eLoran PNT for the Warfighter

The United States Army is soliciting information for eLoran receivers for the warfighter, either stand-alone or integrated with GPS.

The Jan. 14 Request for Information (RFI) provides an outline for the potential use of the receivers in Army and other Department of Defense (DoD) maritime, aviation, or vehicular platforms and for position and timing purposes.

“As part of the Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing (APNT), program effort, the Army is investigating the potential benefits from utilizing eLORAN ‘signals of opportunity’ to aid in developing PNT solutions for the warfighter. Thus, the Army is interested in leveraging the recent technology development efforts in the industry mainly for adding eLoran capabilities into Army APNT solutions,” the RFI reads.

Primary technical areas the Army is interested in include the receiver specifications; its use for maritime, aviation, vehicles, and timing; SWaP-C considerations for an integrated GPS and eLoran receiver; potential benefits of one-way messaging capabilities using the eLORAN data channel; signal tracking where GPS is unavailable (indoors, under water, in urban environments); and how quickly a demonstration could be held.

The assumption is for an order quantity of 50,000 units after a five-year development effort. The Army hopes to determine industry interest in developing such a receiver if the DOD “were to consider eLoran as a PNT source/signal of opportunity.”

For more information and full details, see the RFI here.

January 15, 2015
U.S. Army, Lockheed Martin Complete Second Autonomous Convoy Demonstration

The U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) and Lockheed Martin successfully demonstrated additional capabilities of the Autonomous Mobility Appliqué System (AMAS) May 29 at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

They conducted a driverless line-haul convoy with seven military trucks at speeds up to 40 mph.

The AMAS CAD II demonstration built upon capabilities demonstrated at Fort Hood, Texas, in January, when three unmanned military trucks negotiated oncoming traffic, followed rules of the road, recognized pedestrians, and avoided various obstacles at speeds up to 25 mph in an urban environment.

AMAS is a Joint Capability Technology Demonstrator, or JCTD. That means it’s a joint program between the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps. The AMAS common appliqué kit consists of the bi-wire active safety kit and the autonomy kit. It uses GPS, lidar systems, Automotive radar, and commercially available automotive sensors to make the system affordable. The AMAS JCTD goal is to standardize these kits across both the Army and Marine Corps and give the warfighter the ability to transform ordinary vehicles into optionally manned vehicles.

Colonel Bruce B. McPeak, Director of Materiel Systems, Combined Arms Support Command, climbs into a Heavy Equipment Transporter (HET) for an autonomous ride-along.

TARDEC is working closely with the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), military users, and the acquisition community to advance the development of autonomous appliqué systems for tactical vehicles and make these capabilities available by 2020.

Autonomy-enabled vehicles will reduce accidents while augmenting the warfighter, and increase capabilities by creating greater stand-off distance from danger, which would make supply distribution safer and more efficient, and provide the flexibility to adapt to tomorrow’s ever-changing and evolving threats.

“The driverless vehicle is coming in both commercial and military applications,” said Bernard Theisen, TARDEC’s AMAS Technical Manager. “The Army is at the forefront of this technology.”

Military and industry VIPs drove alongside the convoy in a bus to watch the unmanned convoy demonstration.

June 11, 2014
ORBCOMM, Savi Announce Strategic LBS Partnership

ORBCOMM Inc., and Savi Technology have announced a strategic relationship to provide advanced location-based monitoring solutions to government and commercial markets.

ORBCOMM is a global provider of machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions, and Savi Technology is a provider of sensor-based analytics and radio-frequency identification (RFID) solutions.

ORBCOMM and Savi have submitted a proposal in response to the U.S. Army RFID IV project, which will provide both ISO18000-7 RFID tags and a suite of satellite solutions for military logistics support. ORBCOMM’s GlobalTrak division has been a leading player in providing military Enhanced-In-Transit-Visibility (EITV) solutions to the government market since 2008, and Savi has been a market leader in military RFID solutions, enabling it to offer vast market experience with the right blend of technology platforms for this proposal.

“The combination of ORBCOMM’s satellite expertise and broad network service portfolio with Savi’s state-of-the-art RFID technology offers a full spectrum of innovative monitoring solutions to our collective market base with focus on our government and international customers,” said Marc Eisenberg, Chief Executive Officer of ORBCOMM. “Although RFID and satellite tracking have traditionally been divergent technologies, the synergy of these solutions within a common operating environment creates a seamless transition from infrastructure to wireless-based location services for tracking and monitoring high-value assets.”

“By bringing two market leaders with highly complementary technologies together, we have created a best-of-breed solution for our customers in both government and commercial markets,” said Bill Clark, chief executive officer of Savi Technology. “This relationship will support Savi’s operational analytics capabilities by providing additional ways to collect critical data and deliver timely and reliable operational intelligence to our customers. We look forward to partnering with ORBCOMM on RFID IV and other global opportunities in the near future.”

October 10, 2013
On the Edge: History Underfoot

A U.S. Army camp near Townsville’s suburban areas, circa 1944.

By Tracy Cozzens

Beneath the surface of a tropical paradise in the city of Townsville on Australia’s Sunshine Coast lies a hidden maze of tunnels and underground bunkers, once said to be used by General Douglas MacArthur. Learning the secrets of this labyrinth that was a major World War II staging point for battles in the Southwest Pacific is the passion of Kevin Parkes of Geo Positioning Services, Townsville.

Parkes’ main tool is historic aerial photography, coupled with hours of research in the National Australian Archives and the National Library of Australia. To that he adds geophysical surveys of the infrastructure. Parkes is undertaking the geophysical surveying and mapping using an Ashtech ProMark 100 GNSS receiver and a Willy Bayot PPM Mk 3 magnetometer. He used the magnetometer and GPS receiver in parallel, later processing both data sets.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese advance through Asia, Townsville’s population bloomed from 30,000 to 120,000 by mid-1943. The rapid military influx stretched resources to the breaking point.

The U.S. Army 5th Air Force established the largest aircraft repair and maintenance facility ever built in the southern hemisphere at Townsville, and the site became the technical hub of U.S. military aviation. Air Force Service Command Depot #2 at Townsville was capable of overhauling 300 aircraft engines per month and performed aircraft assemblies, modifications, overhauls, and maintenance. Major resources and facilities serviced the Royal Australian Air Force, Australian and U.S. Armies, Royal Netherlands Air Force, Royal Air Force, Canadian forces, Royal Navy, and other allied forces.

“A visitor to Townsville today would be forgiven in asking where the artifacts of this massive military facility are today,” Parkes said. “There is very little remaining in any built structures that give any idea of what happened in this city 70 years ago.”

Parkes realized that underground cave shelters were most likely used for warehousing and storage, to keep stores out of the weather and protected from enemy action.

He describes one area he investigated, a park in Townsville used as an officer’s accommodation camp. Preliminary magnetic anomaly surveys indicated linear anomalies were beneath the park surface. A high-resolution survey gave samples of about 1.5-meter resolution.

“The difficulty was reducing all noise levels down to a minimum, including the X/Y positioning, so the GPS requirements came down to survey quality,” Parkes said. “It is absolutely critical that the GNSS receiver and magnetometer keep in synchronization during data collecting runs including under the frequently encountered tree canopies.”

To improve accuracy, Parkes avoids using real-time kinematic survey equipment. “That would involve having another electronic device operating and emitting more noise in the signal spectrum,” he said. The need to position the GPS antenna in close proximity to the magnetometer sensor was a major issue with all on-pole RTK systems.

A U.S. Army air raid shelter under the officer’s accommodation camp, mapped with GPS and magnetometer data and using Surfer 3D surface mapping software.

With an Ashtech Promark 3, post-processed results were better than 100-millimeter X/Y coordinates. “The unit is lightweight and self-contained,” Parkes said. “The noise from the Ashtech survey-grade external antenna’s effect on the magnetometer data was insignificant.”

Still, this park had a grove of trees that defied every attempt to maintain GPS reception and consequently synchronize the magnetometer. Along came the Ashtech ProMark 100, a lightweight and self-contained receiver with external geodetic antenna with GPS and GLONASS. “My first attempt at surveying under the trees was spectacular to say the least,” Parkes said. “Synchronization with the magnetometer data was near perfect.”

The dual-constellation reception of the ProMark 100 became essential to the success of Parkes’ work. After more than a hundred data-collection passes with the magnetometer and ProMark 100 through the groves of trees, at no time did the Position Dilution of Precision (PDOP) rise to more than three, and at all times more than eight satellites were available. The ProMark 100 data is post-processed to improve accuracy. Parkes noted that ironically many of the most interesting finds have been collected under heavy tree canopy. Without the quality of the geographic positions enabled by the ProMark100 under tree canopy, Parkes said that much of his work would have been impossible to achieve.

Parkes’ surveying equipment includes a magnetometer and a ProMark 100 GNSS receiver.

In fact, when Parkes first began his mapping project in 2005, he used a single-constellation GPS system and post processed the results against the local International GNSS Service (IGS) reference station. The GPS-only system worked very well until a grove of trees would interfere with the sky. Now with the ProMark 100 GNSS receiver, Parkes surveys using GPS L1 and GLONASS in continuous kinematic mode at a one-second collection rate. He then post processes the data against another ProMark 100 used as a local reference station.

To date, Parkes has mapped an underground railway, artillery observation posts, several shelters, fuel terminals and other yet-to-be-identified pieces of the vast infrastructure.

During his Research, Parkes mapped a major magnetic anomaly in Cleveland Bay. In 1770 Captain James Cook in the HMS Endeavour mapped the east Australian coast. Venturing into Cleveland bay, Cook noticed his compass behaving erratically, and named one island Magnetic Island. Today, a 3D surface model reveals a large magnetic anomaly heading across Cleveland Bay and straight towards Magnetic Island, 7 kilometers from Townsville. Experts who have examined the data believe that it is a naturally occurring magnetic anomaly about 800 meters wide. “It would appear that Captain James Cook was indeed a very capable navigator and cartographer,” Parkes said.

January 1, 2012
U.S. Army Testing Rugged, Autonomous Robot Vehicle

The U.S. Army’s Autonomous Platform Demonstrator, or APD, is a 9.6-ton, six-wheeled, hybrid-electric robotic vehicle currently undergoing developmental and mobility testing at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. According to an Army statement, the demonstrator vehicle represents the state of the art in unmanned ground vehicle mobility technology.

With its advanced hybrid-electric drive train, the 15-foot-long vehicle, being developed by the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC), can achieve speeds of more than 50 mph.

When equipped with its autonomous navigation system, the APD is configured with GPS waypoint technology, an inertial measurement unit and computer algorithms which enable it to move autonomously at speeds up to 50 mph while avoiding obstacles in its path.

“The vehicle has obstacle detection and avoidance technology,” said Jim Overholt, senior research scientist in robotics at TARDEC.

The mobility testing is aimed at advancing and developing the robot’s ability to maneuver at higher speeds while maintaining extreme terrain-ability at lower speeds.

“We’ve run it through courses, slope testing and brake testing,” said Chris Ostrowski, associate director for Vehicle Electronics and Architectures at TARDEC.

The APD is currently testing high-speed maneuverability, such as lane changing. “This is a challenging controls problem with a skid steer vehicle. We want the robot to be stable when performing maneuvers like this, but we also want it to retain the other mobility characteristics that it possesses at lower speeds,” said Ostrowski.

Other mobility characteristics include the ability to climb a one-meter step, navigate a 60-percent slope, and pivot turn in place.

Being a series hybrid-electric vehicle, the APD is propelled by six in-hub electric motors and has a diesel generator which charges its lithium ion batteries.

“The state-of-the-art hybrid-electric drive train is just one of the mobility technologies we are demonstrating with this platform,” said Andrew Kerbrat, APD project manager, TARDEC.

Other technologies being demonstrated include advanced suspension systems, thermal and power management systems, robotic safety systems, and lightweight hull technologies.

“We’ve made a lot of progress with this platform in a short time period. From concept to wheels on the ground was just a shade over two years, and in the eight months since then, we’ve driven almost 3,000 kilometers and have demonstrated 95 percent of the metrics that we were trying to show with this platform,” said Kerbrat.

APD is the mobility platform being used by the Robotic Vehicle Control Architecture, or RVCA Army Technology Objective, also out of TARDEC. Working with PEO-Integration, RVCA has integrated a suite of system control, display and sensing hardware and software onto APD that allow it to be controled real-time by a Soldier, or operate in an autonomous mode.

“It uses a variety of sensors and a Ladar — a laser/radar scanning radar that can detect moving objects at distances,” said Overholt. Additionally, RVCA provides Reconnaissance Surveillance and Target Acquisition capabilities.

“It has a four-meter mast with a sensor ball on top so it goes up pretty high and can see out quite a ways,” said Chris Ostrowski.

“When you combine the autonomy and control capabilities provided by RVCA with the extreme mobility characteristics of APD, it allows the Soldier operator to quickly deploy a mission payload precisely where he wants it, and over some very tough terrain,” said Kerbrat.

“The bottom line is that we are providing the soldier with a significant capability that will assist him in the performance of his mission, while keeping him safer in the process.”

June 24, 2010