All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
The Army isn't about to be upstaged at its own party by its contractors. Inside a pseudo-base set up on the floor of the sprawling Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington D.C.'s convention center is Forward Operating Base Modernization, a set-piece military version of Disney's Carousel of Progress. Only the Army's equivalent has models of synced-up soldier gear and a 32-pound motorized robot on treads designed to go into dangerous places troops can't.
This WALL-E-looking creature is the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, or SUGV, a cousin of iRobot's Packbots. When last we checked in on it, the Army was testing the SUGV at Fort Bliss to see if it makes sense for infantry use. Testing continues. But the glee with which Army officials showed it off for reporters -- and its pride of place in the Army's brochure for modernization -- suggests that the service really, really wants it to work.
It's not so hard to see why. Maybe there's a cave in Afghanistan or an unfamiliar compound on an urban battlefield that could be rigged to explode. Or perhaps there's a place packed with toxic chemicals that troops might not want to explore. Use a wireless controller to send SUGV into that tight spot, and its cameras and optics send streaming full-motion video, still imagery and audio back to a unit to warn it of any danger.
A quick peek at a screen hooked up to a SUGV-eye view showed black-and-white footage snapped of whatever came in the way of its "head," a programmable amalgamation of cameras propped up on a mechanical neck that can extend about three feet on command. (If it can send color imagery, as was once planned, I didn't see it.)
At Forward Operating Base Modernization, Major Mark Taylor manipulated SUGV through a hand-held controller, sending it back and forth and elevating it to climbing postures by turning its front treads vertical, a feature that makes the robot hard to tip over and immobilize. But Rickey Smith, a civilian official with the Army Capabilities Integration Center, marveled at one of its lower-tech features: a small black handle behind its neck. Might not sound like the most revelatory addition. According to Smith, though, soldiers using SUGV used to pick the robot up by the neck, breaking it like a child's toy.
Two more issues for the robot before it's ready to tag along on infantry missions: first, it putted around the convention floor for about three and a half hours before its batteries needed a recharge. Smith says that the demo copy was "running hot," using all its features at once, so a more realistic battery life is about five or six hours for intermittent use.
Second, it's not really built for speed. Although no one on hand could tell me what SUGV's maximum velocity is, Smith says it "cannot keep up with soldiers" out on a mission, though maybe a "hard march" is more its pace. Hence the reason for the pick-up handle. Whether the Army picks up the SUGV as a whole is a different story.
Photo: Spencer Ackerman
See Also:
