Believe it or not, this is the smallest truck the Oshkosh Truck Corporation makes. It's a slimmed-down version of the six-wheeled Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement, or MTVR, the team fielded in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge.
Like its big brother, this MTVR is known as TerraMax, and it's been acing its DARPA Urban Challenge qualifying trials. First came the E-Stop trial yesterday, during which the vehicle accelerated down a straightaway and then slammed on the brakes in response to a DARPA judge flipping a kill switch. "Another box to check," quipped team leader John Beck.
Then came negotiating four-way stops with other vehicles, and rerouting around blocked roads this morning--which TerraMax handled with aplomb. "It was very nicely done," said a DARPA judge of the U-turn the surprisingly agile TerraMax executed to avoid the obstacle in the road.
TerraMax weighs 15 tons, and as you can imagine, it gets horrendous gas mileage--about four miles per gallon.
Team engineers seamlessly blended the bot's sensors--11 cameras, a GPS, and bumper-mounted lidar laser range finders--with the structure of the truck itself. The computer guidance system is similarly tucked out of sight. That's in keeping with Oshkosh's goal to sell production robotrucks to the military (its main customer for the MTVR is the Marine Corps). The company figures commanders will want to mix manned and unmanned vehicles in the same fleets without onlookers noticing the difference.
