2007 & 2018


ROBOTS does IT TAKE?


How many


Then: a veritable ‘pet ting zoo’ of 7,000 unique robots, each slightly dif ferent to operate and expensive to maintain. Now: the challenge of get ting all the functions of those 7,000 on just three main robotic plat forms.


I


t’s an arresting image: A dog—well, a “dog”—loose in the Sonoran Desert moves through a group of empty cars and trucks, sniffing around before halting and sig- naling to its handlers. Army personnel arrive on scene


to dismantle the bomb identified by the “dog,” which is in fact a robot equipped with a powerful sensor that detects vapors or particles emanating from explosive devices.


It sounds novel even now, though robotic platforms have proliferated across the battlefield since 2005, when the test—described in a 2007 Army AL&T article—took place at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona. Te problem had particularly desperate urgency when casualties from impro- vised explosive devices (IEDs) were mounting in Iraq, where IEDs at that time killed 330 service members each month, on average. “We had to do this,” Dr. John A. Parmentola said in an Oct. 21, 2017, interview with Army AL&T magazine. “I saw enough pictures of Soldiers blown up.” Parmentola, then director for Army research and laboratory


management in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, led the team that came up with the robotic explosive-sniffing dog and wrote about lessons learned from fielding it.


Te problem persists today: how to keep Soldiers a safe dis- tance from explosive devices and chemical hazards as they go out to find and remove them. And, as robots grow more capable, what other “dull, dirty and dangerous” tasks can they take over from Soldiers?


Parmentola led an early attempt, a quick-fielding project— two years from napkin sketch to 120 units in the field—that put an explosive-sniffing sensor (“Fido”) on robotic legs (called Fido/PackBot). Previously, explosive-detecting sen- sors were affixed to a handheld wand or device, putting Soldiers too close to the hazards they were looking for. Deploying Fido on a robotic platform kept them out of the way.


ASC.ARMY.MIL 269


THEN & NOW


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