July 31, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Kelsey Atherton
Every map is an outdated map. Buildings change, people relocate, and what was accurate a decade ago may mean nothing to someone on patrol today. Which is one reason the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is pursuing Fast Lightweight Autonomy, a program designed to teach drones to effortlessly scout and map unfamiliar locations, without the help of GPS or external guidance tools, so that the military can rely on the freshest scouting information possible.
For Phase II of the program, DARPA split the task into three parts. One team worked on better flight outdoors in a natural environment at full speed. Another team pursued drone flight in an urban environment, with the drone building a semantic map of the cars and buildings it encountered, while a third team focused on navigating indoors. Taken together, the teams are demonstrating in part the way robots can do what humans do when in unfamiliar terrain, but then speed it up and transmit that information back to humans following behind.
First and foremost are the military applications. If DARPA's program results in workable code and sensors, future missions equipped with quadcopters could let the robots scout a contested area before putting any humans at risk. And that area could include dense woods, civilian-lined streets in an area that's seen some insurgent action, or even shelled-out buildings that may be hiding snipers or other traps. The robot explores and informs, and then the humans can follow afterwards, with fresh information loaded onto their tablets and guiding their movements.
There are applications for the technology beyond a shooting war. Rescue workers could use drones based on this software to see if a damaged building is safe enough to send rescuers into, or to see if there are even people alive inside who might need rescuing. Drones that can fly quickly through forests could seek out lost hikers, shifting the human energy from search to rescue.
Some of this, notes FLA program manager Jean-Charles Ledé, could be done at present by skilled human pilots, the kind that race drones with first-person view goggles. But, says Ledé, “We don't want to deploy a world-class FPV racer with every search and rescue team.”
Drones that can navigate by software alone reduce the skill needed to manage the flying robots. In a pinch, the algorithm is a substitute for expertise, and far more scalable a solution.
July 18, 2023 | International, Aerospace
The Tunisian defense ministry said on Tuesday it had received four T-6C training aircraft from the United States, as part of cooperation to renew its fleet of training aircraft for the air force.
April 6, 2022 | International, Naval, C4ISR, Security
'We have 15 years of track record that proves that the current approach to cybersecurity, driven by a checklist mentality, is wrong,' says Aaron Weis, the service's chief information officer. 'It doesn't work.'
August 28, 2020 | International, Naval
Andrew Eversden WASHINGTON — A new request for information from the U.S. Navy outlines the service's interest in launching a “hardware factory and hardware pipeline” to keep its fleet computing platforms up-to-date. According to an Aug. 25 request posted by the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), the sea service wants the factory as part of a broader effort to “architect, implement, and migrate” to a universally managed, infrastructure as a service environment for the sea service's surface fleet. NAVSEA wants the pipeline and factory ready for use no later than fiscal 2023. The Navy wants to use the hardware factory and hardware pipeline concept to use agile development to accelerate the development of its computing infrastructure. The new model is part of the Navy's effort to transition away from technology insertions and move toward continuous hardware refreshes aboard its current and future surface fleet. The request is for a program called Future Integrated Combat System Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Computing Infrastructure (FICS-CI), managed by NAVSEA's Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems. “The Navy envisions a transition to a HW Factory and HW Pipeline Process continuously delivering IaaS to pace technology, eliminate obsolescence, and enable continuous design and development of [computing infrastructure] solutions that meet ship needs with minimal deviation from commercial standards and practices,” the RFI states. The program is part of an effort by the NAVSEA's PEO IWS to migrate systems to a “common, scalable intermittently connected edge cloud architecture” using IaaS to enable platform as a service. NAVSEA wants to deploy the computing architecture to large and small combatants, aircraft carriers, amphibious ships, and “other related programs including U.S. Coast Guard, AEGIS Foreign Military Sales, and proposed future ship classes.” The RFI lists several interest areas for the Navy: systems engineering; IaaS design and integration; technical data packages; production; diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages, hardware, and software version release tracking; and integrated logistics support, maintenance and operations training. “The HW Factory and HW Pipeline will streamline component selection, qualification, integration, life cycle support and training for the Fleet, leading to accelerated infrastructure development and fielding,” the RFI states. “The Navy envisions a continuous CI refresh cycle rapidly delivering improved Lethality, Combat Capability and Capacity to the Surface Navy Fleet to confront an increasing array of Strategic, Operational, and Tactical Challenges.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/it-networks/2020/08/27/us-navy-wants-to-create-a-hardware-factory/