Autonomous Technology is Cool for 'CATS'

(West Sale, Victoria, Australia, February 19, 2008) -- BAE Systems' developments in the area of unmanned ground vehicles have taken a step forward with the integration of autonomous technologies onto a Supacat vehicle.

The autonomous technology at the heart of the BAE Systems Supacat-based unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) was originally developed by BAE Systems Australia as the Vehicle Management System (VMS) and ground mission systems for the Kingfisher UAV (unmanned air vehicle) and has since been used on the Raven, Corax and HERTI UAVs. This latest milestone, which involved the BAE Systems UGV autonomously driving and navigating itself around a 100 acre paddock at the Company's UAV Flight Test Facility in West Sale, Australia, demonstrated the ability to take the common systems / common architecture approach, already used by BAE Systems in its UAV development activities, into the land domain.

"The development of the BAE Systems UGV took less than 6 months and used lessons learnt from earlier work using an autonomous Bowler Wildcat 4x4 vehicle developed by our Advanced Technology Centre (ATC) in the UK" says Dr. Julia Sutcliffe, System Autonomy Capability Manager for BAE Systems Australia. "Bringing together technologies and capabilities from across the globe has given us the ability to develop our vehicle more rapidly and efficiently."

The development and sharing of these technologies comes through BAE Systems' Capability Augmentation Program (CAP), managed by the UK based Strategic Business Development department.

"This is a significant development for two reasons," says Geoff Slater, Technology Acquisition Director for Strategic Business Development. "Firstly, it will help us examine how we can take this technology from testing and research to the battlefield and, secondly, it shows how we are working across BAE Systems to harness our collective knowledge and expertise to benefit the serving soldier. Additionally, the technology integrated onto the UGV will inform future developments in BAE Systems' centrally funded research into autonomy and its application on the battlefield."

The BAE Systems UGV is currently fitted with a number of sensors and software, allowing it to undertake a range of operations with little or no human input, including leader-follower support and tactical reconnaissance operations. Future developments will see the integration of collision avoidance and obstacle detection technologies, road following, navigation and data fusion technologies, further increasing the level of autonomy.

The BAE Systems UGV Ground Environment was also an adaptation of the ground environment, known as the ISR Management System, developed by BAE Systems Australia in support of the Kingfisher, Raven Corax and HERTI UAV developments, demonstrating the utility of the open architecture approach.

"The autonomous systems technologies and processes we are developing and demonstrating, particularly in relation to C4ISR networking solutions, and the integration of unmanned vehicles into the wider C2 and Information Environments, will provide significant benefit to future programs such as the Australian DoD Air 7000 Phase 1B program", says Brad Yelland, Integrated Autonomous Systems Manager for BAE Systems Australia.

Source : BAE Systems

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