iRobot 2008 Annual Report Download - page 57

used by these third parties for their own development of consumer and industrial products. The contract
development projects that we are currently undertaking include, but are not limited to:
Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle and Centralized Controller Device. Future Combat Systems (FCS) is
a major program intended to transform the U.S. Army to be strategically responsive and dominant at every
point on the spectrum of operations, through real-time network centric communications and systems of a
family of manned vehicles and unmanned platforms by the next decade. The FCS program combines advanced
technologies, organizations, people and processes with concepts to create new sources of military power that
are more responsive, deployable, agile, versatile, lethal, survivable and sustainable. The FCS system of
systems is designed to provide increased strategic responsiveness, adaptive modular organizations, and units of
action with three to seven days of self-sustainment.
Our specific role in the FCS program is to design and develop the SUGV, which is intended to be the
“soldier’s robot.” The SUGV is expected to be a light-weight, man-portable robot that will support recon-
naissance, remote sensing and urban warfare. Based on input from soldiers and commanders in the field, to
focus on infantry first, the Army moved to more aggressively support current operations with FCS capabilities,
including the SUGV. This acceleration of the SUGV prototypes was two years ahead of schedule. In July 2008,
a Preliminary — Limited User Test (P-LUT) focused on the Infantry Brigade at Fort Bliss, Texas. The SUGV
is now preparing for a formal Limited User Test (LUT) scheduled in summer of 2009 and will form the basis of
an acquisition decision or production decision in December of 2009. A successful production decision could
lead to fielding as early as late 2011.
In addition, we have been selected by Lockheed Martin Corporation, the provider of the Centralized Controller
Device (CCD) for the FCS program, to be a key supplier of design and development for the CCD’s controls and
display through its estimated delivery in 2015. The CCD is a handheld device that will allow an individual soldier to
remotely control or query the systems in an FCS brigade — from a Class I Unmanned Aerial Vehicle to an
unmanned ground system. Our involvement in the FCS program has enabled us to improvevarious management and
control systems and enhance our engineering capabilities to achieve the Software Executive Institute’s Config-
uration Maturity Model certification Level III. The program has also funded the development of earned value
measurement and advanced modeling and simulation.
Warrior. Warrior is a 300-pound tracked vehicle, capable of transporting over 150 pounds of payload,
with a small footprint and extreme mobility. This effort is currently supported by the Joint Ground Robotics
Enterprise and U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC). The
Warrior design incorporates a number of concepts present in our other remote controlled vehicles and
demonstrates many of the advantages that modular payloads and common interfaces can bring to the military
robotics community. The primary goal of this effort is to advance the maturity levels of the Warrior hardware,
firmware and software, and to enhance environmental ruggedness to a level suitable for small quantity
manufacturing and evaluation of Warrior platforms in field trials.
Daredevil. Daredevil is an applied research project funded by the TARDEC in which we are inves-
tigating the development of an integrated sensor suite consisting of ultra wideband RADAR sensors and high-
resolution imaging sensors to provide improved sensing capabilities for Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs),
such as the iRobot PackBot. The development of this sensor suite is aimed at improving the navigation
capabilities of UGVs operating in dense foliage and poor weather conditions such as rain, snow, smoke. The
capability of this integrated sensor suite will extend the benefits of UGVs to warfighters engaged in operations
in dense foliage and poor weather conditions and increase their mobility, survivability, and lethality.
UGV/UAV Collaborative Engagement. In coordination with researchers from Carnegie Mellon Uni-
versity, the goal of this U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC)-
funded project is to develop a collaborative engagement tool for mission planning and task allocation for the
command and control of multiple unmanned air and ground vehicles. The primary project objective of this
effort is to design an automated software tool that facilitates the dynamic collaboration of unmanned air and
ground vehicles to enable effective joint operations. This capability will be demonstrated in a mission scenario
using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to find, identify, and locate a target of interest on the ground, for
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