T.M.I., Robo-​​Dude

That’s “too much infor­ma­tion,” for those of you over the age of four­teen. These days, infor­ma­tion supe­ri­or­ity is sup­posed to make U.S. mil­i­tary forces faster, smarter and more lethal and able to defeat more numer­ous foes on their own turf. But how much infor­ma­tion can one sol­dier process, and how fast can he make decisions?

Unmanned vehi­cles sport­ing sophis­ti­cated sen­sors are key sup­pli­ers of new and more volu­mi­nous streams of info to grunts on the ground. But in addi­tion to poten­tially over­whelm­ing cus­tomers with too much infor­ma­tion, robots require reg­u­lar input from their human masters.

That’s a key prob­lem fac­ing the engi­neers respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing the Army’s human-​​robot inter­faces. At the U.S. Army Tank-​​Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center in sub­ur­ban Detroit, Gregory Hudas and his col­leagues are try­ing to fig­ure out what robots should be allowed to do on their own, and what they should ask per­mis­sion for. The key fac­tors are what human oper­a­tors are com­fort­able with, and what they’re capa­ble of. “We must be aware of when they [sol­diers] get overloaded.”

To work out this prob­lem, the folks at TARDEC have linked up two con­soles rep­re­sent­ing the con­trols of a Future Combat Systems fight­ing vehi­cle. Each con­sole boasts three tall touch-​​screen dis­plays. At the cen­ter in front of a padded seat, there is a con­trol stick sim­i­lar to what you might see on an arcade game. The con­soles include a sim­u­la­tion func­tion, akin to a video game, that the TARDEC engi­neers use for tests.

On one screen, a TARDEC engi­neer rep­re­sent­ing an FCS crew­man brings up an over­head map of the bat­tle­field dot­ted with icons rep­re­sent­ing his vehi­cle and four robots that he’s con­trol­ling. One is a Fire Scout aer­ial drone. The oth­ers are ground drones equipped with cam­eras and guns. On his other screens, the crew­man can see what his robots are see­ing in addi­tion to what’s out­side his own vehi­cle. It’s a mas­sive amount of data for one man to process, and things are sure to get worse when he decides to send his drones on a recon­nais­sance mis­sion, poten­tially forc­ing him to also coor­di­nate the move­ments of five vehi­cles simul­ta­ne­ously while fac­ing an elu­sive enemy on unfa­mil­iar terrain.

Which is why the Army decided that each FCS vehi­cle would include two iden­ti­cal con­soles. Side-​​by-​​side crew­men would share respon­si­bil­ity for all the func­tions described above. The Army believed that by coor­di­nat­ing their efforts, one two-​​man crew should be able to con­trol 10 drones and keep up with all their data feeds.

But that’s too many robots, Hudas says. Four drones is the real­is­tic max. And a third crew­man at an addi­tional con­sole is ideal. And that’s assum­ing a min­i­mal level of human inter­ven­tion in the drones activ­i­ties. Basically, you tell a drone what to do, con­firm the com­mand, then let it go. Now, if the drone wants to kill some­thing, it’s going to need a soldier’s per­mis­sion. But for sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance, it can make its own deci­sions. “With those appli­ca­tions,” Hudas says, “we don’t even want a soldier.”

Thanks to TARDEC and other research orga­ni­za­tions, the Army is mak­ing enor­mous strides in com­bin­ing think­ing men and think­ing machines into one cohe­sive fight­ing force. That’s the sub­ject of a fea­ture slated for our March issue. Stay tuned.

–David Axe, cross-​​posted at Ares and War Is Boring

January 29th, 2007 | Drones, FCS Watch | 34322 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/01/29/t-m-i-robo-dude/T.M.I.%2C+Robo-Dude2007-01-29+16%3A50%3A41haninah_levine You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.