PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

CMU building armored robot for U.S. Marines
by vincent / blast furnace radio Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2005 at 9:43 PM
eirene@telerama.com 1-888-NOTOWAR

CMU robots, where higher education gets down to the business of killing

friends,

with all the services being shut down in our cities and transpotatation in
jeorpardy CMU's new found work is obscene.

vincent


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http://post-gazette.com/pg/05042/456138.stm


CMU building armored robot for U.S. Marines
University gets $26.4 million government contract

Friday, February 11, 2005
By Jerome L. Sherman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Carnegie Mellon University will develop a new generation of armored
reconnaissance robots for the U.S. Marine Corps, beating out defense
giant Lockheed Martin for a $26 million government contract.

Working with United Defense Industries of Arlington, Va., Carnegie
Mellon is to deliver six Gladiator Tactical Unmanned Ground Vehicles,
known as TUGVs, by July 2007, the university and the Department of
Defense announced yesterday.

Carnegie Mellon researchers will receive an initial payment of $12.4
million on the $26.4 million contract.

A successful prototype of the robot was created by scientists with
Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, and as many as 200 robots may
eventually be manufactured at United Defense's Fayette County facility
in Uniontown.

The U.S. military has increasingly been turning to unmanned vehicles as
a way of surveying hostile terrain while keeping soldiers away from
enemy fire. Unmanned Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles have
been used extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq to swoop over
battlefields, transmitting real-time images to controllers on the
ground.

Military officials hope the Gladiator will do the same thing, moving
into potentially hostile areas ahead of U.S. troops.

"The idea is to get it out front and take the Marines out of harm's
way," said Bill Thomasmeyer, executive vice president of the newly
formed Technology Collaborative, which helped put Carnegie Mellon's
National Robotics Engineering Consortium together with United Defense.
"This has the potential to save thousands of lives."

The Gladiator will resemble a bulky, armored all-terrain vehicle,
weighing about a ton, with six wheels. A Marine will control it with a
remote.

According to Dimi Apostolopoulos, Carnegie Mellon's lead scientist on
the project, the Gladiator will use sensors to warn soldiers about a
variety of dangers: enemy positions, barbed wire, mines, and even
chemical, biological or nuclear threats.

The Gladiator will also be able to detect and avoid obstacles such as
craters.

Scientists with Carnegie Mellon's National Robotics Engineering
Consortium started working on the Gladiator project in 2002, under the
auspices of the Office of Naval Research. In February 2004, the team
completed a prototype, which was tested twice by the military at the
Marine Corps' headquarters in Quantico, Va., Apostolopoulos said.

First, the Gladiator's mobility was tested. Military officials were
looking for a unit that can function on all types of terrain, in
temperatures ranging from 25 degrees below zero to 125 degrees, while
withstanding fire from automatic weapons like the AK-47.

Second, the military tested the robot's sensory capabilities.

Apostolopoulos was thrilled when he found out that the military had
awarded the contract to Carnegie Mellon.

"It's recognition by the Marine Corps that we have the solutions to
address their needs in a practical way," he said. "That's huge for
us."

Eventually, the Marines hope to arm the Gladiator with machine guns and
other weapons.

Carnegie Mellon needed to work with an experienced partner in the
defense industry to advance to this new phase of the Gladiator project,
Thomasmeyer said.

Herb Muktarian, a spokesperson for United Defense, described his
company's partnership with the university as a natural fit.

"Carnegie Mellon has a long history with robotics, and our company has
a long history in the integration and production of military vehicles,"
he said.

United Defense and Carnegie Mellon will open a joint office at the
university's robotics facility in Lawrenceville. The development team
also includes General Dynamics Armaments and Technical Products,
Tadrian Electronic Systems, and Timoney Technologies Ltd.

The Technology Collaborative was formed last month in a merger of the
Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse and the Robotics Foundry.

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