Navy testing robot Jet Ski for harbor patrols

Called "Blackfish," the vehicle is designed to protect harbors from terrorists posing as recreational watercrafts or swimmers.

By Eric Niiler

From http://news.discovery.com/

• The 10-foot long remote-controlled jet ski cruises across the waves at 40 miles per hour.
• It will patrol ports where U.S. Navy ships are docked.

To build Blackfish, engineers sawed off the top half of an existing jet ski and added sensor packages for underwater sonar, surface radar and a video camera.

QinetiQ

Naval commanders have a new tool in protecting their ships against bad guys in the water: a 10-foot long remote-controlled jet ski that can see underwater and cruise across the waves at 40 miles per hour. The so-called “Blackfish” is undergoing testing by the Office of Naval Research after its recent development by the British defense contractor Qinetiq.

Developers of the Blackfish say its design to scare off swimming terrorists who may be lurking in ports where U.S. ships are docked. Such a suicide attack by Al-Qaeda operatives killed 17 sailors on the USS Cole back in 2000 when it was docked in the Yemeni port of Aden.

“In both domestic and foreign ports, there’s great concern about swimmers approaching the boats underwater,” said Mark Hewitt, senior vice president for maritime and transportation for Qinetiq North America. “The Navy has been working on the problem for some time.”

While the U.S. Navy boasts huge firepower, and the ability to launch a full-scale war from sea, its real vulnerability, experts say, is from small watercraft or swimmers who can slip through the cracks. That’s where something like the Blackfish comes into play.

Hewitt said engineers at the company “sawed the top half off” an existing jet ski and added sensor packages for underwater sonar, surface radar and a video camera. The craft operates within a one-kilometer range from its human driver, and can be programmed to run a route through the water based on GPS waypoints. There’s also the possibility of adding weaponry.

Hewitt said the toughest engineering challenge was making it go slow enough.

“It’s a jet ski, it goes fast,” he said. “Human swimmers only go two knots. We solved the problem by adding bow thrusters, so you can turn off the main propulsion and track at low speeds.”

Hewitt says any collision between Blackfish and a friendly surfer or swimmer probably won’t result in major injuries; it uses a hydro-jet instead of a propeller. Still unanswered is the question of who is at fault if someone were to get hit by a robo-ski, the human operator or the company who made the robot.

Port security has been a huge concern for the navy, as well as the commercial shipping industry. Just last month, experts from several branches of the U.S. military, the Department of Homeland Security, Coast Guard, local authorities put together a war game of sorts in San Francisco Bay to figure out how best to detect a threat from a boat.

The simulation is will continue for several months using Navy and civilian law enforcement, working with underwater vehicles, drone aircraft, linked computer networks and other kinds of advanced sensors to counter a nuclear radiological threat smuggled aboard a small craft, according to Alex Bordetsky, associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and director of the project, which is a collaboration with the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

The idea of using unmanned vehicles like Blackfish to perform difficult, boring or dangerous tasks are gaining fans at the Pentagon, according to Sam LaGrone, U.S. maritime reporter for Jane’s Defence Weekly. In addition to a technological advantage, LaGrone says there’s a big financial one as well. Robot guards don’t need breaks, and they cost less to operate.

“If you have an unmanned system that can persistently hang out and cover more ground than a person with eyeballs and a rifle, it’s something to consider,” LaGrone said. “That’s probably why they are pursuing this. The name of the game is saving money.”

The latest version of the LittleDog Robot

sschaal1 — March 24, 2010 — This is the more advanced version of this robot, created by the University of Southern California. The robot is completely autonomous and trained by machine learning algorithms. The video is real-time, i.e., not sped up.

Israeli Robots Remake Battlefield

Nation Forges Ahead in Deploying Unmanned Military Vehicles by Air, Sea and Land

By CHARLES LEVINSON
From: http://online.wsj.com/

(See Corrections & Amplifications below).
TEL AVIV, Israel – Israel is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential future of warfare.
Sixty years of near-constant war, a low tolerance for enduring casualties in conflict, and its high-tech industry have long made Israel one of the world's leading innovators of military robotics.

WSJ's Charles Levinson reports from Jerusalem to discuss Israel's development of robotic, unmanned combat systems. He tells Simon Constable on the News Hub how they are deploying unmanned boats, ground vehicles and aerial vehicles.

"We're trying to get to unmanned vehicles everywhere on the battlefield for each platoon in the field," says Lt. Col. Oren Berebbi, head of the Israel Defense Forces' technology branch. "We can do more and more missions without putting a soldier at risk."
In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel's military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel's leading weapons manufacturers.
"We are moving into the robotic era," says Mr. Katz.



Over 40 countries have military-robotics programs today. The U.S. and much of the rest of the world is betting big on the role of aerial drones: Even Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite guerrilla force in Lebanon, flew four Iranian-made drones against Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War.
When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it had just a handful of drones. Today, U.S. forces have around 7,000 unmanned vehicles in the air and an additional 12,000 on the ground, used for tasks including reconnaissance, airstrikes and bomb disposal.
In 2009, for the first time, the U.S. Air Force trained more "pilots" for unmanned aircraft than for manned fighters and bombers.
U.S. and Japanese robotics programs rival Israel's technological know-how, but Israel has shown it can move quickly to develop and deploy new devices, to meet battlefield needs, military officials say.
"The Israelis do it differently, not because they're more clever than we are, but because they live in a tough neighborhood and need to respond fast to operational issues," says Thomas Tate, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who now oversees defense cooperation between the U.S. and Israel.
Among the recently deployed technologies that set Israel ahead of the curve is the Guardium unmanned ground vehicle, which now drives itself along the Gaza and Lebanese borders. The Guardium was deployed to patrol for infiltrators in the wake of the abduction of soldiers doing the same job in 2006. The Guardium, developed by G-nius Ltd., is essentially an armored off-road golf cart with a suite of optical sensors and surveillance gear. It was put into the field for the first time 10 months ago.
In the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli soldiers took a beating opening supply routes and ferrying food and ammunition through hostile territory to the front lines. In the Gaza conflict in January 2009, Israel unveiled remote-controlled bulldozers to help address that issue.

More on Israel

David Furst/AFP for The Wall Street Journal.

Israel pioneered the use of aerial drones like the Heron, under construction, above, at Israeli Aerospace Industries.

• WSJ.com/Mideast: News, video, graphics

Within the next year, Israeli engineers expect to deploy the voice-commanded, six-wheeled Rex robot, capable of carrying 550 pounds of gear alongside advancing infantry.
After bomb-laden fishing boats tried to take out an Israeli Navy frigate off the coast off Gaza in 2002, Rafael designed the Protector SV, an unmanned, heavily armed speedboat that today makes up a growing part of the Israeli naval fleet. The Singapore Navy has also purchased the boat and is using it in patrols in the Persian Gulf.
After Syrian missile batteries in Lebanon took a heavy toll on Israeli fighter jets in the 1973 war, Israel developed the first modern unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.
When Israel next invaded Lebanon in 1981, the real-time images provided by those unmanned aircraft helped Israel wipe out Syrian air defenses, without a single downed pilot. The world, including the U.S., took notice.
The Pentagon set aside its long-held skepticism about the advantages of unmanned aircraft and, in the early 1980s, bought a prototype designed by former Israeli Air Force engineer Abraham Karem. That prototype morphed into the modern-day Predator, which is made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.
Unlike the U.S. and other militaries, where UAVs are flown by certified, costly-to-train fighter pilots, Israeli defense companies have recently built their UAVs to allow an average 18-year-old recruit with just a few months' training to pilot them.
Military analysts say unmanned fighting vehicles could have a far-reaching strategic impact on the sort of asymmetrical conflicts the U.S. is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and that Israel faces against enemies such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
In such conflicts, robotic vehicles will allow modern conventional armies to minimize the advantages guerrilla opponents gain by their increased willingness to sacrifice their lives in order to inflict casualties on the enemy.
However, there are also fears that when countries no longer fear losing soldiers' lives in combat thanks to the ability to wage war with unmanned vehicles, they may prove more willing to initiate conflict.
In coming years, engineers say unmanned air, sea and ground vehicles will increasingly work together without any human involvement. Israel and the U.S. have already faced backlash over civilian deaths caused by drone-fired missiles in Gaza, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those ethical dilemmas could increase as robots become more independent of their human masters.
Write to Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com
 
Corrections & Amplifications
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. manufactures the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that General Dynamics Corp. manufactured the UAV.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A10

A Robomedic for the Battlefield

Roboinspector: A snake robot inspects the head of a skeleton lying on a high-tech stretcher designed by the military, called the Life Support for Trauma and Transport system. Credit: Howie Choset/Carnegie Mellon University

Multimedia Watch a demo of the snakelike robotic arm.

The first 30 minutes after a battlefield injury are dire: that's when nearly 86 percent of battlefield deaths occur. Before attending to the wounded, frontline physicians have to quickly locate the casualty and extract him from the battlefield, often under heavy fire. This can take up costly minutes, as well as expose medics themselves as possible targets.

Now researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) are developing technology to give battlefield medics a helping hand--literally. Howie Choset, an associate professor of robotics at CMU, has engineered a snakelike robotic arm equipped with various sensors that can monitor a soldier's condition. The robot can be wirelessly controlled via a joystick, so that a doctor at a remote clinic may move the robot to any point on a soldier's body to assess his injuries as he's being carried to a safe location. The robot's serpentine flexibility allows it to maneuver within tight confines, so that, in case a casualty can't be extracted from the battlefield immediately, the robot can perform an initial medical assessment in the field.

Choset and his colleagues have been building "snakebots" for over 10 years, improving range of motion and flexibility, as well as minimizing the overall size in multiple prototypes. In the past, the group has designed robots for urban search-and-rescue missions, and has worked with Ford Motor Company to build snake robots for precise auto-body painting. The team recently formed a startup company to commercialize one of its latest technologies, a robot that can potentially perform heart surgery.

Currently, the team is collaborating with the U.S. Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) to integrate the robotic arm within the military's high-tech stretcher, called the Life Support for Trauma and Transport system (LSTAT). This stretcher is essentially a portable intensive-care unit, with a ventilator, defibrillator, and other physiological monitors, and it's currently being used in areas of Iraq and Afghanistan. Medics can quickly load a casualty onto the stretcher and attend to injuries with the equipment onboard.

"It has all these sensors onboard so we can perform preliminary diagnostics and maybe therapeutics to save the guy's life," says Choset. "The problem is, these sensors are attached to the LSTAT, and you would have to move them by hand, and if someone's shot and you go over and help them, you're an easy target. So we want to automate this whole system, and robotically move the sensors onto the patient while he's being dragged off the battlefield."

Choset and his students have engineered a highly articulated robotic arm that consists of multiple actuated joints, which give the robot a snakelike flexibility. Each joint has two degrees of freedom that, working together, allow the robot to flex, retract, and twist into different configurations, much like a live snake.

Because it's impossible for a person to simultaneously control all the joints on the snake, the team developed software to enable precise control of the robot's movements via a joystick. In lab tests, researchers could successfully guide the arm, mounted with a camera, up and down a skeleton's body using the joystick and watch the resulting pictures on a laptop.

Choset has affixed various physiological sensors to the robotic arm, including a detector for carbon dioxide and oxygen to test whether a person is breathing. He says that the robot can also sport an oxygen mask and, if connected to the stretcher's onboard ventilator, can potentially maneuver over a soldier's mouth and deliver oxygen, without the help of a medic.

In the future, Choset hopes to add an ultrasound component to the robot, so that it can quickly scan a soldier for signs of internal bleeding. His team is collaborating with researchers at Georgetown University to develop an ultrasound probe for the robotic arm. To perform ultrasound, Choset says that the robot would require a certain amount of strength and delicacy so that it can determine how much force to apply to gently press a probe against the skin. He and his students plan to explore this robotic challenge in the future, along with other applications for the snake robot.

Sylvain Cardin, a senior medical robotics scientist at TATRC, suggests that there may be other military applications for the robotic arm. "It could be on a small vehicle you could send into the field, and the medic could attend the patient in a remote location," says Cardin. "So you could be under fire, and could send this little vehicle out with the snake arm, and be able to attend the casualty without showing everyone we're attending the casualty."