The Risk Factor

There was an AP story last week on the Army's "exoskeleton" robotic suit being developed by Sarcos Inc (now owned by Raytheon) that potentially will "multiply a person's strength and endurance as many as 20 times."

"Jack Obusek, a former colonel now with the Army’s Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center in the Boston suburb of Natick, foresees robot-suited soldiers unloading heavy ammunition boxes from helicopters, lugging hundreds of pounds of gear over rough terrain or even relying on the suit to make repairs to tanks that break down in inconvenient locations," according to the story.

The suit is still not practical: it is very expensive, and the suit’s battery life currently lasts only 30 minutes.

I got a little more insight into some of the military mission drivers behind this suit last week when I was at the third annual iRobot payload conference. Ellen Purdy, Director - Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise, US Department of Defense, gave the keynote address describing some of the robotic efforts the DoD is supporting.

In one example, Mrs. Purdy spoke about the problems involved in developing "robotic convoy" capabilities. It's one thing to say I want an autonomous convoy capability, it is quite another to implement it, she said. On top of the detailed technical issues of actually developing an autonomous vehicle, there are a number of mission issues that immediately arise as well.

For instance, how many vehicles does one designate autonomous versus being manned to ensure there is adequate security for the convoy? How far should each vehicle be separated from one another to maintain safety margins, especially if it is at night or in bad weather? Does every vehicle also need to be able to be driven manually if the convoy is attacked or if a vehicle breaks down?

The robotic suit comes into play in that, say you have an autonomous convoy showing up that has few if any soldiers accompanying it, who is going to unload it? A small number of soldiers, each wearing a suit, will be able to do the work of many more than otherwise would be needed for that task, Mrs. Purdy said.

What Mrs. Purdy pointed out was that each decision to use robots has other implications that are not always obvious and need to be thought through. As she remarked, "The Army doesn't know what it doesn't know about robots."

Over the week, I'll write up a bit more about what I heard at the conference, which for me not being a "robot guy," I found pretty interesting.