HOW MANY ROBOTS DOES IT TAKE?
THE ORIGIN STORY
In 2005, I was attending a meeting at TARDEC [the U.S. Army Tank Auto- motive Research, Development and Engineering Center] where TARDEC per- sonnel demonstrated ODIS, a low-profile robotic system. About a month earlier, I had visited the Army[-established] Insti- tute for Soldier Nanotechnologies [at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology] to discover they had taken the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Dog’s Nose Program to an operational device, Fido. At the time, it was the world’s most sensitive explosive detector.
Because ODIS had a mast that retracted into the robot, a NASA technology,
I
began to think of putting Fido on the mast and using it to remotely sniff inside a vehicle for explosives, rather than hav- ing a Soldier exposed to an IED. The idea began to come together where we could put Fido and a state-of-the-art camera on a robotic system, so if a Sol- dier had a wearable vest with a display, the Soldier could see what the robot was seeing, and at the same time see an indicator showing whether an explosive is present. [It also had] a joystick used to maneuver the robot to a position where it could sniff something suspicious. The world’s first robotic dog that could see and sniff and could be remotely con- trolled—that was the concept.
BUT DOES SOMEONE NEED IT? So then I needed to find a mission needs statement, where an Army school iden- tified a need for this. It turned out that Fort Leonard Wood was the place where a need existed. George Anderson was a civilian working there. I connected with him, and he managed to find a mission needs statement calling for a platform that could inspect underneath a vehicle. I asked the proponents of the mission needs statement: “If we gave you much more than that, would you be happy?” They said they would.
If it weren’t for George Anderson, we wouldn’t have succeeded: He had to make a case for this solution with a cul- ture that opposed using robotic systems.
He demonstrated the kind of courage and persistence you need to accomplish something like this. We assembled the most dedicated, capable team of people I’ve ever worked with, to work on all aspects of this.
However, we had to do some home- work: What specific platform would we use? We needed something low-profile that could go under a vehicle. TARDEC’s ODIS was one, iRobot had PackBot [and] Foster-Miller had a candidate robotic platform. I called a meeting among all of those in the Pentagon that touched on this issue: the OSD [Office of the Secre- tary of Defense] Robotics Office, TSWG [the Technical Support Working Group], Night Vision Laboratory, the Joint Robot- ics Office at Redstone Arsenal, TARDEC, Army Research Laboratory, etc. I told them we were going to do the fastest acquisition in history. Urgency was the motivation. We wanted to get something out that would save Soldier lives.
We didn’t follow a standard acquisition process. We created a single sheet of paper that had the selection criteria on it: low profile, ability to have an articu- lated arm, to reach high up (at least 6 feet), technical readiness level, etc., and also pan and tilt to look inside the cab or the trunk of a suspect vehicle. I arranged for three contractors to come in to HQ. Each one had half an hour to make a presentation on how they could fulfill the requirements. In two hours we did source selection. PackBot was the best choice, according to the team vote, and the most mature of all the technologies. There were cheaper platforms, but they weren’t operationally proven; PackBot was. That led to Fido/PackBot.
Then we had to estimate what it would cost to put together and how long it would take to complete the prototype. As Army director for research and laboratory management, I knew my labs well, and I knew Redstone and AMRDEC [the U.S. Air and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center] had a well- established prototype integration facility. I contacted a very capable guy there
by the name of Bill Schultz and said, “I want to prove to people that something like this can be done in record time.” I wanted to produce a full prototype, test it and have training manuals in 90 days. I told Bill to analyze this, talk to contrac- tors, convince himself and then convince me and the people in my office that this could be done: “If there’s too much risk, we’ll change the schedule, but I want you to spend some time thinking about it. A week later he said, “I firmly believe we can do this.”
Starting from the day we received fund- ing, we managed to pull this whole thing off in 90 days. That was a record; I’ll bet it still stands.
FEEDBACK UNDER FIRE Five units were fully tested. We shipped four to Camp Victory in Iraq and kept one in the U.S. for troubleshooting. Sol- diers started to experiment. There was a Marine, Col. Ed Ward, whose dedication to this project was phenomenal. He went into theater around Thanksgiving. He was in a vehicle taking a unit for testing to Abu Ghraib prison and he was send- ing me emails: “We’re under fire.”
Feedback from in theater was gener- ally positive in terms of ease of use and effectiveness. JIEDDO [the
Joint
Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization] decided, based on that, to procure 120 units. Over 200 were even- tually procured, I believe. In my home I have a plaque with a part of one of them that was blown up by an IED, saving a Soldier’s life. It’s the most precious and memorable thing I own.
—DR. JOHN A. PARMENTOLA, as told to Army AL&T
This interview excerpt has been lightly edited for clarity and length. The U.S. Army Materiel Command named Fido/ PackBot—officially called the Integrated Robotic Explosive Detection System— one of the 10 best inventions of 2006. Find out more at
https://www.army.mil/ article/3629/army_recognizes_great- est_inventions_for_2006.
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Army AL&T Magazine
January - March 2018
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