ROBO-​​COPTER: TALK TO ME

“See that build­ing over there? Bomb the hell out of it.“
That’s how easy the Pentagon wants com­mand­ing its Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR) to be, Aerospace Daily reports. The drone copter, sched­uled to come on line around 2012, should be able to act on ver­bal com­mands — and respond back in plain English, too.
Although the idea might seem far-​​fetched, “that’s today’s tech­nol­ogy,” [UCAR pro­gram man­ager Don] Woodbury said. “The U.S. is behind the rest of the world in this area. There are at least three air­craft fielded today that have [voice com­mand] capa­bil­ity in the cock­pit.” Outside of UCAR, very lit­tle work on voice com­mand of air­craft is tak­ing place in the U.S., accord­ing to Woodbury.
DARPA hopes to develop UCAR’s voice com­mand sys­tem mostly with off-​​the-​​shelf tech­nol­ogy, Woodbury said. Such tech­nol­ogy could have appli­ca­tion to manned air­craft such as the AH-​​64 Apache attack heli­copter as well, he said. “Even with­out UCAR, it might be use­ful for … Apache pilots to be able to inter­act with their machines ver­bally,” he said. “They ought to be look­ing out­side the cock­pit where the tar­gets are.“
Jointly man­aged by DARPA and the Army, the $500 mil­lion UCAR pro­gram is attempt­ing to develop a highly autonomous unmanned com­bat heli­copter that can work in groups, engage in close com­bat at the nap of the Earth, and oper­ate seam­lessly with other manned and unmanned Army sys­tems. The heli­copter is being designed to accom­mo­date a num­ber of pos­si­ble weapons, includ­ing the Joint Common Missile (JCM) and Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS), although it always will require human con­sent before fir­ing.
The UCAR will be tasked through the Army’s exist­ing com­mand and con­trol archi­tec­ture rather than through a ded­i­cated ground sta­tion, accept­ing com­mands from per­son­nel in ground vehi­cles, other air­craft, or even dis­mounted. With its enhanced auton­omy and onboard arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, UCAR would be able to oper­ate on a “much longer leash” than tra­di­tional unmanned aer­ial vehi­cles, accord­ing to Woodbury. 

June 14th, 2004 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.