Aptima Lands Unmanned Vehicle Contracts with U.S. Army, Navy

November 19, 2007 // Published as a news service by IHS

The Army and Navy contracts address a continuum, scaling from how individual unmanned vehicles, such as drones, can be operated with fewer personnel, to the coordination of teams of UxVs used in joint military operations.

According to Aptima, UxVs, which are used for surveillance, to detect and disarm improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and as weapons systems, have become a key part of the U.S. military's transformation.

The company said pursuit of a mixed initiative force of the future that combines humans and robotics requires that unmanned vehicles systems possess greater intelligence by learning from humans and that human operators wield greater control over the types and number of unmanned air, land and sea vehicles that can be coordinated simultaneously across missions.

Aptima will address UxVs at the individual, networked and team-of-teams levels, illustrated by the following three contracts:

• Command and control of small robotics assets display (C2RAD).
  To support the human operator in the field using a robotic vehicle as a forward observer, C2RAD will provide an integrated display that both maps and shows locations of red, green and blue entities, such as snipers, obstacles and friendly forces, and shares that data with other troops and command.

  C2RAD is envisioned as the interface on a handheld device that plans the route of the robotic asset and links its intelligence to others, such as members of a platoon that may be operating in harm's way. Aptima said this will improve the real-time situational awareness of field troops and the larger mission concerns by command and control.

• Mixed initiative machine instructed computing (MIMIC).
  While unmanned aerial vehicles have advanced, particularly in imagery interpretation, for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to reach full potential as autonomous systems, they need to learn tactical behaviors for operating in unexpected situations and in uncertain environments, according to Aptima.

  The development of MIMIC is aimed at helping these unmanned systems perform more independently, capturing the knowledge of human operators and embedding in the control devices the decision-making skills of UAV commanders as to how they generate, select and execute maneuvers in evading and deceiving the enemy.

• Collaborative optimization system for mixed-initiative control (COSMIC).
  For large-scale military operations, such as fleets conducting searches and monitoring large bodies of water for mines and safe ingress and egress, COSMIC will provide a collaborative environment allowing human operators onboard naval combat systems, carriers or aircraft to coordinate multiple unmanned vehicles. COSMIC's tools will facilitate the processes that include global resource planning, mission monitoring and replanning.

Source: Aptima Inc.