21 février 2024 | International, Aérospatial
ST Engineering unveils wheeled ground robot equipped with aerial drone
The firm completed development of the four-wheel drive electric vehicle last year, but is only now showing it to the public.
17 juin 2020 | International, C4ISR
British MoD shortlists four vendor teams for its multibillion-dollar Skynet satellite program
By: Andrew Chuter
LONDON – Four international consortia have been shortlisted by Britain's Ministry of Defence to enter the final stage of bidding to operate ground control facilities for its Skynet satellite communications network.
Teams led by Airbus Defence & Space, Babcock Integrated Technology, BT and Serco, have been down-selected for the Skynet 6 Service Delivery Wrap program following the MoD's Defence Digital organization release of an invitation to tender document to the remaining contenders June 12.
The make-up of one of the teams vying for the ground station operations contract is already known, while others have yet to announce who their partners are.
Serco has declared its team will involve satellite operator Inmarsat, IT specialist CGI UK and the U.K. arm of defense giant Lockheed Martin.
British communications company BT, Babcock and Airbus are all keeping their teaming arrangements under wraps for the time being.
Airbus, Britain's biggest satellite builder, did though coincide the MoD Skynet 6 down-select with a separate space partnering announcement of its own.
The company said June 16 it had teamed with KBR, Leidos UK, Northrop Grumman and QinetiQ to launch a new space initiative known as Open Innovation-Space aimed at increasing British involvement in future satellite communications efforts.
No mention was made by Airbus of the Skynet 6 program.
All the companies are working under strict Skynet 6 non-disclosure agreements with the MoD which forbid communication with the media and others.
The ground station program is the second part of the MoD's wider Skynet 6 project to equip the military and government with a new generation of beyond-line-of-sight communications capabilities starting around 2028.
The Skynet 6 program has already seen Airbus start work on a new satellite, called Skynet 6A, to act as a capability gap filler between 2025 and the introduction of the follow-on, new-generation capacity.
A deal for preliminary design work and long-lead time manufacture was signed by Airbus and the MoD in March and the contract to build the Skynet 6A spacecraft is in the final stages of government approval and expected to be announced within weeks.
The other two key parts of a program presently expected to cost in total around £6 billion ($7.6 billion) are the Enduring Capability project, to provide next generation communications capabilities, and the Secure Telemetry, Tracking and Command (STTC) project for providing assured sovereign control and management of satellites.
The MoD has settled its STTC requirements for SkyNet 6A but its options for the longer term remain open.
Work on defining what the Enduring Capability requirement might look like has been underway for a while and industry executives here expect the effort to be ramped up in the coming months with the first tranche of recommendations due to be presented to the MoD early next year, said people with knowledge of the program.
The next-generation communications requirement is planned to get underway next year with the release by MoD of a pre-qualification questionnaire.
One industry executive, who asked not to be named, said securing the Service Delivery Wrap deal was an important stepping stone towards satellite builders securing the big prize – the Enduring Capability requirement.
“It will help the winning consortium secure local skills in the sector, help in understanding the customers communications requirements and assist in filling in the revenue gaps between what is often sporadic investment in satellites and payloads,” the executive said.
Space is an industrial and military priority for the British, and while it remains unclear how the worsening economic picture here might impact defense spending it is hoped the sector ,and programs like SkyNet 6 and the Galileo global navigation satellite system replacement project, might escape the worst of the expected cuts.
One cost cutting option the British are reckoned to have been looking at is to use future SkyNet 6 spacecraft to double up its use by carrying a GNSS capability as well.
Skynet ground facilities are currently operated by Airbus as part of a wider private finance initiative (PFI) deal signed in 2003 to build, own and operate a constellation of communication satellites and associated capabilities on behalf of the British military.
That deal expires Aug 2022. The winning Service Delivery Wrap contender is slated to take over ground operations from that point after a transition phase.
In a contract note issued June 16 the MoD said the return date of the invitation to tender is set for June next year.
The Service Delivery Wrap arrangement runs for five years, not including any transition phase, with two single-year extension options also expected to be included in the deal.
The terms of the existing PFI arrangement entail the MoD paying a nominal fee of a Pound in exchange for which it will take ownership of hundreds of millions of Pounds worth of assets in the shape of ground infrastructure and the Skynet 4 and 5 satellite fleets currently operated by Airbus.
This time around the MoD wants to retain overall ownership of the capability in order to help grow its space skills and management experience by way of owning the ground station assets with the winning consortium working under a straightforward service provision deal.
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28 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Terrestre
Robots Autonomously Navigate Underground in DARPA Challenge
Whether robots are exploring caves on other planets or disaster areas here on Earth, autonomy enables them to navigate extreme environments without human guidance or access to GPS. The Subterranean Challenge, or SubT, is testing this kind of cutting-edge technology. Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the contest concluded its second circuit on Wednesday, Feb. 27. Taking first in the competition was CoSTAR, a 12-robot, 60-person team led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (there were also winners declared for a separate, virtual competition). SubT is divided into four circuits spread over three years. With each, teams program their robots to navigate a complex underground course. The first contest, held last August, took place in a mine. For the most recent, called the Urban Circuit, teams raced against one another in an unfinished power plant in Elma, Washington. Each team's robots searched for a set of 20 predetermined objects, earning a point for each find. For the Urban Circuit, CoSTAR earned 16 points; the No. 2 team, with 11 points, was Explorer, led by Carnegie Mellon University. "The goal is to develop software for our robots that lets them decide how to proceed as they face new surprises," said CoSTAR's team lead Ali Agha of JPL. "These robots are highly autonomous and for the most part make decisions without human intervention." CoSTAR, which stands for Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Robots, brought machines that can roll, walk or fly, depending on what they encounter. Along the way, the bots have to map the environment and find objects like a warm mannequin that simulates a disaster survivor or a lost cellphone with a Wi-Fi signal. This particular course, which aims to simulate an urban environment, also included a carbon dioxide leak and a warm air vent. Joining the team for the Urban Circuit was a four-legged robot called Spot, which was provided by Boston Dynamics. "One of the two courses we had to run had multiple levels, so it was great that the Boston Dynamics robots were fantastic on stairs," says Joel Burdick, a Caltech professor and JPL research scientist. He is the leader of the Caltech campus section of the CoSTAR team. As the bots explore, they send back video and digital maps to a single human supervisor, who they remained in radio contact with for the first 100 feet (30 meters) or so of the course. They can extend that range by dropping communications nodes, a kind of wireless repeater. Once out of contact, it's up to each robot to decide whether to proceed or backtrack in order to update the team. Each must also rely on fellow robots to access different levels of the course. For example, a wheeled robot might request a quadrupedal one to climb or descend a flight of stairs. "These courses are very, very challenging, and most of the difficulty lies in communicating with the robots after they've gone out of range," Agha said. "That's critical for NASA: We want to send robots into caves on the Moon or Mars, where they have to explore on their own." Mapping caves on the Moon or Mars could identify good shelters for future astronauts. Moreover, if it exists at all, microbial life has a better chance of survival under the surface of Mars or within the icy seas of planetary moons, like Europa, Enceladus and Titan. NASA wants to search for life in these regions, where robots would be frequently out of contact. The next circuit in the Subterranean Challenge will be set in an undisclosed natural cave network this August. A final circuit that blends tunnels, urban environments and natural caves will take place in August of 2021. Teams competing in that final event have the opportunity to win up to $2 million in funding from DARPA. CoSTAR, includes JPL; Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA; MIT; KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology); Sweden's Lulea University of Technology; and industry partners. News Media Contact Andrew Good Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-393-2433 andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov 2020-041 https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2020-041&rn=news.xml&rst=7607
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5 février 2024 | International, Terrestre
EU member countries push back on Italy’s call for European army
The EU is developing a Rapid Deployment Capability force of up to 5,000 troops from member countries for use in non-permissive environments.