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Unmanned ground vehicle tested at Fort Bliss

FORT BLISS, Texas — Rolling along through the rugged West Texas desert, the Crusher looks a lot like it could be the newest combat vehicle in the Army’s fleet.

But looks are deceiving.

This 6.5-ton, six-wheeled truck with a .50-caliber machine gun affixed to the top has no driver, no cargo hold for soldiers.

Instead, the Crusher is an unmanned ground combat vehicle that will never see battle.

The brainchild of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a high-tech research arm of the Department of Defense, and robotics engineers at Carnegie Mellon University, Crusher is a concept vehicle for the Army.

“This is Orville and Wilbur [Wright] for unmanned vehicles,” said Stephen P. Welby, director of DARPA’s tactical technology office.

Eventually, some sort of large unmanned ground combat vehicle is scheduled to be added to the Army’s arsenal as part of its Future Combat Systems, but it isn’t likely to look anything like Crusher, a menacing $30 million olive green machine with 49-inch tires.

But the technology, including the software that drives the robot with little human intervention, is expected to be key in future projects.

Engineers from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon built the self-piloted robot with technology that helps it learn from what it runs over, or into, said John Bares, a robotics expert at Carnegie Mellon.

“It can read the terrain” and define flat ground, vegetation, and obstacles, said Tony Stentz a Carnegie Mellon robotics engineer working on Crusher’s autonomy.

Built from scratch by the project’s developers, Crusher runs on lithium ion batteries and an industrial-grade Volkswagen Jetta engine.

Even its moniker is something of a misnomer. During a ninth field test Tuesday, Crusher used its artificial brain — not brawn — to obliterate barriers.

The six-wheeled vehicle ran over a rugged stretch of desert that included Army tank tracks, steep rock piles, desert gullies, and other natural obstacles.

When Crusher came to a steep berm at the edge of a tank track, it turned itself around and scanned for an easier spot to cross before continuing on its path through the desert along its assigned course.

A series of laser radars, cameras and other technology attached to the robot read the terrain as Crusher moved along at an average 7 mph, and relayed that information to the high-tech computers that guided the machine.

All the data and pictures were monitored by operators in a trailer several miles away. With the right mix of communication software, Welby said, Crusher could be controlled from anywhere. Tuesday, a researcher studying the vehicle controlled its cameras and machine gun using an iPod Touch music player.

Crusher can be driven remotely as well, though soldiers who tested the robot earlier this month found it easier to let the machine do the work while they monitored camera and radar images, Bares said.

When testing is complete later this year Crusher will be given over the Army, which received its first automated robot earlier last year.

Welby said it’s not clear yet what the Army will do with the unmanned vehicles — the test trucks aren’t equipped to be deployed in a combat situation.

“Development from here is up to the Army,” Welby said.