The US Army is testing a self-driving Humvee truck that it hopes will help soldiers who are trapped in dangerous situations on the battlefield.
The Humvee, which is called the ‘Wingman’, is being tested to see if it can accurately identify and shoot targets.
Mounted on top of the truck is a .50-caliber machine gun and an autonomous remote engagement system that communicates with the command and control vehicle stationed nearby.
The robotic Humvee, pictured, is part of a two-vehicle system called the ‘Wingman,’ which also includes a command and control vehicle that’s manned by three soldiers
The autonomous remote engagement system is supposed to reduce the time it takes to identify targets by using a ‘vision-based automatic target detection and user-specified target selection,’ the Army said.
The Army conducted a live fire exercise using the Wingman Humvee last year, but it hopes to conduct more exercises with more heavily armed ground robots in the next few years, according to Defense One.
A live fire exercise is when the military tests specific equipment in realistic scenarios.
‘The scenario here was a complex breach in a minefield,’ Paul Rogers, director of the Army’s Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) told Defense One.
‘You had engineer platoons with infantry support going in and putting in bangalore torpedos,’ he added.
Bangalore torpedos are an explosive charge placed in tubes to clear obstacles or clear out mines.
In the ‘Wingman’ program, a command and control vehicle manned with three soldiers always accompanies the unmanned vehicle.
The manned vehicle acts as back up for the robot truck when it shoots.
It’s the first time that the Army has conducted an exercise with an autonomous ground vehicle that’s capable of shooting, Defense One noted.
The Army has used armed robots in the past, including in the Iraq War in 2003 and in other combat.
But the Army is only now beginning to test the armed robots accuracy with targets.
It’s being heralded as the first step toward weaponized robotics, according to the Army.
The Army has been working to introduce more autonomous technologies into the battlefield, but it’s progress has been comparably slower compared to the other services, according to Popular Mechanics.
It can be harder for robots to navigate the muddy, hilly and desert environments experienced by Army soldiers.
‘We are on that path of exploration,’ Rogers noted. ‘It’s experiment, test, feedback, [address] concerns, challenges and limitations.’
The ‘Wingman’ system includes an unmanned robot vehicle (left) and a command and control vehicle (right) that has three soldiers on board. It provides backup for the robot Humvee
‘You go through an iterative approach, but the faster we can turn those iterations, the better,’ he added.
However, no one should be worried that the armed robots will just be let loose without human supervision.
‘You’re not going to have these systems go out there like in ‘The Terminator’ [film],’ said Thomas Udvare, director of the program, in a statement.
The unmanned vehicles will be used to accompany U.S. Army forces in dangerous situations.
Pictured, the Humvee is equipped with a machine gun and an autonomous remote engagement system, which is supposed to reduce the time it takes to identify targets by using a ‘vision-based automatic target detection and user-specified target selection’
For example, the Humvee might be used alongside the Special Forces. If they’re in a contested location, the soldiers might choose to send the Humvee into the situation instead of soldiers, Udvare said.
‘Autonomous systems aren’t going to be smart enough to be on their own for decades,’ Udvare added.
‘How we make split decisions on what we process in our environment … is very complex’
‘To add autonomous platforms to the manned formations and have both the man and the machine work side-by-side to accomplish a mission is pretty powerful,’ Udvare said.