Army Wanted Backpack Bot To Haul Fire Extinguisher

A silly little story about the inanities of defense contracting. In the Army's vision of the future, every 200-man company of soldiers will carry around its own, 30-pound ground robot -- to peer around corners, hunt for improvised bombs, what have you. The idea is to keep the thing as light and as simple as possible, since some poor grunt is going to have to haul the robot around on his back, in addition to his regular load. And since the machine is very likely to be blown up anyway.

But the military has a habit of loading up even straight-forward gear with endless "requirements" and "capabilities." Even when they make no sense at all. Take this machine, built by iRobot, the folks who make the Roomba vacuum cleaners, as well as military gear.

Investigators at the Government Accountability Office report that "developers at iRobot told us" the requirements for the "small unmanned ground vehicle" were so bad, they specified that the machine "have a fire extinguisher onboard and be able to withstand direct lightning strikes."

The GAO crew notes, dryly, "Since the small unmanned ground vehicle is a small man-packable robot, these requirements were not practical." *GovExec.com's *Bob Brewin adds:

Even small fire extinguishers -- such as the one in my house -- weigh more than 4 pounds. This seems like a lot of extra weight to add to a grunt load, which would include not only the robot, but body armor, personal weapons and multiple canteens of water...

I once toted a humongous load on my back as a
Marine radio operator, and if someone told me I also had to hump around a four-pound fire extinguisher, I would apply good grunt logic and throw it away.

But the oddest thing about this tale is that the Army's paper-pushers didn't decide that its little 'bot had to be fire- and lighting-proof. The GAO says they just took the specs for its
3,000-pound Multifunction Utility/Logistics Equipment machine, and mindlessly applied 'em to the 30-pound small unmanned ground vehicle.

"The word 'vehicle' was in the name, and that meant two things: one, a fire extinguisher; two, a trailer hitch. Because two things every Army vehicle has to do is out out fires and tow another vehicle," a former iRobot employee tells me.

It gets better. Because the word "unmanned" was involved, the machine was at first required to use the Autonomous Navigation System, a collection of computers and sensors, designed to let the robot drive around on its own. At the time, ANS weighed more than a hundred pounds and drew more than a kilowatt of power. Not exactly practical for a backpack 'bot. Eventually, the requirement was reversed. But only after long, long negotiations.

(Smart thinkin': RSN; photo: Boeing)