DARPA explores future unmanned technologies

In its search for improved unmanned vehicle capabilities for military missions, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched its Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) programme.

Announced by DARPA on 17 March, the programme was created as a result of what the agency considers to be the ‘poor’ capability of unmanned assets currently in service.

Focusing primarily on unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), the programme ‘seeks to create and demonstrate significant scientific and engineering advances in robot mobility and manipulation’, according to a statement released by the agency.

‘Nature has adapted many mobility and manipulation modes (eg, such as grasping, walking, and undulatory locomotion) to multiple environments (eg land, water, and air). It is expected that many results of the M3 programme will be applicable to more than one environment,’ DARPA said.

The programme was initially announced in May 2010, and multiple contracts have since been awarded to companies including: Boston Dynamics, HRL, iRobot, Raytheon, Tekrona, and Vecna Technologies.

These companies, alongside some 14 universities and research institutes, have been contracted to create and demonstrate new technologies for the programme, which have been split into four tracks. These are: design tools, fabrication methodologies, control methods, and technology demonstration prototypes.  

Efforts were expected to include both scientific and engineering development, as well as analysis, simulation and experiment, and the development of a UGV that can interact in an unstructured, dynamic and natural environment.

DARPA believes that new approaches to engineering better design tools, fabrication methods and control algorithms, were needed if the programme is to be successful.

The agency envisages programme reviews each year with M3 expected to reach its final review stage by 2014.

‘Initially M3’s control efforts will focus on approaches using augmented teleoperation, also known as supervised autonomy. Thus, concepts with primary application to full autonomy, cognition, reasoning, high-level decision-making, high-level decision-making under uncertainty, and other higher-level cognitive functions are envisioned as a potential later addition to the M3 programme,’ said DARPA.