Army Combat Vehicles With AI
by Steven Park, U.S. Army Research Laboratory
July 26, 2020
When Soldiers enter a new environment, their mission demands they
stay one step ahead of the enemy; however, they may find it
challenging to maintain a high level of alertness if they're driving
a combat vehicle across unfamiliar or dangerous terrain.
The
U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research
Laboratory designated several research programs as essential for
future Soldier capabilities. Of these major flagship programs, the
Artificial Intelligence for Maneuver and Mobility, or AIMM,
Essential Research Program, endeavors to reduce Soldier distractions
on the battlefield through the integration of autonomous systems in
Army vehicles.
Dr. John Fossaceca, AIMM program manager, said
he seeks to develop the foundational capabilities that will enable
autonomy in the next generation of combat vehicles. This include the
construction of a robotic combat vehicle that operates independently
of the main combat vehicle.
The Artificial
Intelligence for Maneuver and Mobility, or AIMM, Essential
Research Program, endeavors to reduce Soldier distractions
on the battlefield through the integration of autonomous
systems in Army vehicles ... This include the construction
of a robotic combat vehicle that operates independently of
the main combat vehicle. (U.S. Army Research Laboratory courtesy
photo - April 4, 2019)
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“The main purpose of this essential research program is to build
autonomous systems that help the Army effectively execute
Multi-Domain Operations,” Fossaceca said. “We don’t want Soldiers to
be operating these remote-controlled vehicles with their heads down,
constantly paying attention to the vehicle in order to control it.
We want these systems to be fully autonomous so that these Soldiers
can do their jobs and these autonomous systems can work as teammates
and perform effectively in the battlefield.”
Considerations
that go into the development of military autonomous vehicles differ
significantly compared to those intended for commercial use.
Manufacturers typically design commercial self-driving cars to
operate on pristine roads, where heavy traffic and crowds of
pedestrians play a significant factor in its capabilities. In
contrast, the Army often faces environments with diverse terrains
and areas that may not even have a road to travel on.
“Soldiers may have to operate in forests or deserts, and they may
have to operate in a certain manner like moving stealthily in order
to achieve some objective,” Fossaceca said. “This is very different
than what’s happening in the autonomous vehicle industry, which is
the main model of autonomy available today in terms of autonomous
vehicle research.”
As a result, this research intends to fill
the gaps to cover these unique situations that Soldiers face.
Autonomy in the next generation combat vehicle will not only
help Soldiers make decisions but also clearly explain the rationale
behind its suggestions so that a Soldier can either approve the
choice or intervene if necessary, Fossaceca said.
“Future
military missions are going to require autonomous vehicles that can
determine what the passable routes might be, calculate the best
route and make assessment about what’s happening in the
environment,” Fossaceca said. “We want to integrate this autonomous
behavior in modern military vehicles so that it feels less alien to
the Soldier and can decrease the cognitive burden of the
decision-making process.” In the short term, Army researchers
plan to take advantage of recent advances in computing architecture
and create a single platform that will first perform narrow AI, or
artificial intelligence that can complete very specific tasks
consistently, and leverage these capabilities to build a teammate
for the Soldier.
“We want to perform very specific tasks at
first but make them very robust and make them operate really well,”
Fossaceca said. “And then, as time goes on, we want to make things
more general so that systems can do a lot more than just very
narrow, specific tasks on the battlefield.”
One of the
program’s near-term objectives pertains to the development of
intelligent mobility with narrow AI in environments with minimum a
priori training data. While self-driving cars normally need
tremendous amounts of data to train the vehicle’s intelligent
system, Army researchers have developed techniques to reduce the
training time and data required.
Other examples include
Natural Language capabilities to enhance communication between
Soldiers and their vehicles as well as what Fossaceca referred to as
“tactical teaming with distributed assets,” where the intelligent
system changes and adapts as the mission progresses.
In the
long term, Army researchers want future combat vehicles to be able
to look at the context of the environment and obtain helpful clues.
This capability would require the intelligent system to analyze
complex, adversarial environments and develop possible courses of
action.
“For example, let’s say the vehicle’s intelligent
system notices a roadblock,” Fossaceca said. “An obstacle like a
fallen tree could just be there by coincidence and require
additional navigation in circumventing it, while sandbags may
indicate signs of a trap and require the system to warn the driver
about the possibilities of an ambush. We want our systems to process
these kinds of contextual clues in the future.”
So far,
researchers in the program have worked to improve the autonomy
software stack, a special collection of software algorithms,
libraries and software components for autonomous vehicles.
Originally the product of the laboratory’s 10-year Robotics
Collaborative Technology Alliance, the software stack consists of
computer programs that allow autonomous vehicles to perform
functions such as navigation, planning, perception, control and
reasoning. The autonomy software stack also contains a world model
that the intelligent system can use as a virtual brain to keep track
of information about the world.
“With the autonomy software
stack, we can feed capabilities into the [CCDC] Ground Vehicle
System Center’s software enterprise, so that they can incorporate
those capabilities into their next generation combat vehicle program
in the future,” Fossaceca said. “This is foundational research, and
it represents the program’s core architecture.”
Recently,
Army researchers achieved another important milestone with the
Scalable Adaptive and Resilient Autonomy program, which leverages
external collaborators outside of the laboratory to accelerate the
pace of emerging research in scalable, heterogeneous behaviors.
“We have several different types of robots and systems working
together, and we’re asking external performers to come in and help
us with increasing the complexity of scenarios that we can handle,”
Fossaceca said. “This is really going to help us toward our goal of
autonomous maneuver in multi-domain operations, so this is pretty
exciting.”
CCDC Army Research Laboratory is an element of the U.S. Army
Combat Capabilities Development Command. As the Army’s corporate
research laboratory, ARL discovers, innovates and transitions
science and technology to ensure dominant strategic land power.
Through collaboration across the command’s core technical
competencies, CCDC leads in the discovery, development and delivery
of the technology-based capabilities required to make Soldiers more
lethal to win the nation’s wars and come home safely. CCDC is a
major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Futures Command.
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