Crusher
Application


Telescoping mast enables covert surveillance

As a core building block in the Army's future force, tactical UGVs enable new war-fighting capabilities while putting fewer soldiers in harm's way. The full benefit of this new capability can only be achieved with field-validated understanding of UGV technology limits and consideration of the impact to Army doctrine, personnel, platforms and infrastructure.

UPI experiments encompass vehicle safety, the effects of limited communications bandwidth and GPS infrastructure on vehicle performance, and how vehicles and their payloads can be effectively operated and supervised.

By mid 2006, NREC will integrate its latest automation technology onto both Crusher vehicles. A combination of ladar and camera systems allow the vehicles to dynamically react to obstacles and travel through mission waypoints spaced over a kilometer apart. The use of overhead data via terrain data analysis will continue to be utilized for global planning. Over the next year these two vehicles will analyze, plan, and execute mobility missions over extreme terrains without any human interaction at all. Crusher’s suspension system allows it to maintain high offroad speeds across extreme terrains.