Technology Trends

Many complex networks, from the Internet to proteins interacting with other ones in a cell, or from actors having played together to Romanesque broccoli, have “a common architecture with snowflakes and trees.” And even more surprisingly, Science News reports that “these networks all display similar patterns, whether viewed from up close or far away.” In fact, all these networks are scale-free networks. Like the airline system, they contain hubs — nodes with a very high number of links. In such networks, the distribution of node linkages follows a power law in that most nodes have just a few connections and some have a tremendous number of links. In that sense, the system has no “scale.” The fact that these complex networks can show such a fractal pattern has important implications for a host of applications, from drug development to Internet security. Read more…

Here are some short excerpts from the Science News article.

In recent years, researchers have found that a surprising range of networks has a common structure: a few major hubs with many connections and many minor nodes with only a few connections. In the World Wide Web, for instance, tens of thousands of sites link to a few popular Web sites, such as Google and Yahoo, while there are often just a few links to an individual’s home page.

The researchers note that they discovered this wide-ranging characteristic by figuring out how to “zoom out” and look at networks from farther and farther away. They started by using computer analysis to cover each network with non-overlapping boxes, each of which contained a cluster of nodes separated by less than a specified number of links. Next, the investigators essentially blurred their vision, paying attention to how the boxes — rather than the individual nodes — were connected.

Here are two examples of representations of complex networks.

The Internet is a scale-free network in that some sites have a seemingly unlimited number of connections to other sites. This map, made on February 6, 2003, traces the shortest routes from a test Web site to about 100,000 others, using like colors for similar Web addresses. (Image credit: Internet Mapping Project of Lumeta Corporation; Legend credit: Scientific American)

And this map of interacting proteins in yeast highlights the discovery that highly linked, or hub, proteins tend to be crucial for a cell’s survival. Red denotes essential proteins (their removal will cause the cell to die). Orange represents proteins of some importance (their removal will slow cell growth). Green and yellow represent proteins of lesser or unknown significance, respectively. (Credit for image and legend: Scientific American).

Now, where can lead this discovery of this fractal property of complex networks?

Understanding the architecture of complex networks is important, for example, for protecting the World Wide Web from hacker attacks and for designing drugs with few side effects, says Albert-László Barabási, a physicist who studies networks at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. However, the contribution of the new finding to those advances isn’t yet clear, he says.

“They’ve found something new here, but we don’t know yet whether it is a Rosetta stone that will let us translate the mysteries of networks into something we understand,” says Steven Strogatz, a mathematician at Cornell University.

For more information, Barabási has published many articles on these complex networks. The images above come from an article he wrote with Eric Bonabeau, Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer of Icosystem, a consulting firm based in Cambridge, Mass., and published by Scientific American in its May 2003 issue, “Scale-Free Networks.”

Here is a link to the abstract which states that “scientists have recently discovered that various complex systems have an underlying architecture governed by shared organizing principles. This insight has important implications for a host of applications, from drug development to Internet security.”

And here is a link to the full paper if you have more time (PDF format, 10 pages, 9.34 MB).

And Strogatz, mentioned above, wrote “Romanesque networks” for Nature which was published on January 27, 2005. In this article, Strogatz explores the exquisitely symmetrical properties of the Romanesque broccoli, which he called a “fractal vegetable.”

Sources: Erica Klarreich, Science News, Vol. 167, No. 5, Page 68, January 29, 2005; and various other websites

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It’s not the first time I choose to tell you about wireless sensor-network technology (check below for previous references). But this article from InformationWeek gives me the opportunity to revisit the subject. The story describes several current projects, from the Department of Homeland Security that wants to secure the U.S. borders, to British Petroleum (BP) monitoring its plants and chips. Hewlett-Packard and Intel also are experimenting with wireless networked sensors in some warehouses and factories. As the market is growing, research companies are trying to figure its size. For example, Harbor Research says that the number of wireless sensors in use will grow from 200,000 today to 100 million in three years, adding that this will be a $1 billion market by 2009. I don’t know if these numbers will be reached, but it’s true that wireless sensor-networks, especially mesh networks, are really attractive because of their low costs of deployment. Read more…

As InformationWeek describes various applications, let’s select BP’s experiments.

The potential for cost savings over traditional wired sensors is enormous. BP installed five wireless sensors over Christmas at its Cherry Point refinery in Washington to monitor the temperature inside giant on-site fans. Using the motes will probably cost about $1,000 per measurement point — and maybe $500 within a year or two, says Harry Cassar, technology director in BP’s emerging-tech group. Each connection measured the old way cost $10,000. BP achieved the $500-per-point measurement in a test last summer to measure conditions in the engine room of an oil tanker.

And BP envisions using wireless networks of sensors to monitor industrial plants and ships, remotely adjust lighting and heat in office buildings, test soil for pollutants, and detect whether chemicals are stored properly. “Wireless mote technology has got applications in almost every part of our business,” Cassar says. “We’re not going to be putting in tens of these devices, or even hundreds. Ultimately, it’s going to be thousands.”

Now, let’s look back at the technology itself.

Wireless sensor devices, or “motes,” package together a circuit board with networking and application software; interfaces to sensors that can detect changes in temperature, pressure, moisture, light, sound, or magnetism; and a wireless radio that can report on their findings–all powered by a pair of AA batteries. Enabled by the fusion of small, low-cost chips, low-powered radios, and the spread of wireless networking, motes are a giant leap ahead of traditional sensors that for decades have measured everything from temperature in buildings to factory machines’ vibrations.

Those sensors require wiring to electrical systems, which can cost $200 to $400 per sensor, and are expensive to service. Motes cost about $100 each, and are much cheaper to install. That price could drop to less than $10 in a few years, as mote components follow computing’s march toward higher volumes, better performance, and lower prices.

If this kind of network is attractive, some challenges remain, especially for software. More standards need to be defined to ensure a perfect interoperability between different sensors and “motes.” And software needs to be embedded within these sensors to ensure better reporting. Finally, there are currently no software tools to manage entire wireless networks.

Here are some short quotes from specialists in the field.

“Sensors are just a part of an ecosystem of wireless devices,” says Feng Zhao, a senior researcher at Microsoft who joined the company last year from PARC to head up a new sensor nets research group on Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus. [...] “We need to figure out how to organize these systems and develop interesting applications for them” for real-world use, adds Zhao. “For all these apps, writing software is very challenging. That will probably be a stumbling block between sensors and killer apps.”

“It’s kind of like the beginning of the Arpanet days for this sensor-net technology, where there’s no killer app yet,” says Teresa Lunt, manager of the computer-science lab at PARC.

For more information, you also can read these two interviews of Teresa Lunt and Hans Mulder, associate director, Intel Research.

Sources: Aaron Ricadela, InformationWeek, January 24, 2005; and sidebar stories from InformationWeek

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Las Vegas, like many other major cities, sees more and more traffic jams. In order to better manage the traffic, it decided to try wireless technology, and more specifically, mesh networking. And it turns out that the pilot program will help not only police officers, but also people living in the city. In Viva Mesh Vegas, a long article from IEEE Spectrum, you’ll discover many details about the three-tier resilient mesh network architecture used in this program. The pilot test covers 5 square kilometers for a cost of about $170,000. If Las Vegas decides to expand it to the whole city, it will cost about $6 million. Read more…

First, what are the key benefits of mesh networking?

Mesh networks promise several key advantages over traditional wireless solutions, such as Wi-Fi or cellphones. Benefits include higher speeds, less susceptibility to radio interference, and greater resistance to network congestion. These networks also offer better coverage, the ability to prioritize different types of users, geolocation capabilities, tighter security, faster deployment, and a degree of immunity to catastrophic network failures.

This particular mesh network has been built by a small company named Cheetah Wireless Technologies, Inc. (CWTI).

Below is a diagram of a typical mesh network with its three-tier architecture. This diagram comes from Las Vegas meshes its network, published in October 2004 by Communications News.

Below is another diagram showing the CWTI implementation for this program in Las Vegas. This diagram comes from this page on CWTI site about MeshNetworks, Inc., MEA (Mesh Enabled Architecture). Please note that MeshNetworks has recently bought by Motorola.

Here are some more details about this specific implementation.

Within the Las Vegas MeshNetworks system, the average transmission speed ranges from 500 kilobits per second to 1.5 Mb/s, with bursts of up to 6 Mb/s possible. The backbone of the network is made up of 33 or so shoe-box-size gray boxes attached to traffic-light poles high above the streets, known as wireless routers.

And these routers are connected to the Internet via three Intelligent Access Point (IAP).

In Las Vegas’s case, this is a T-1 line for each of three IAPs that links them to Cheetah’s servers at a secure facility. An IAP takes about a day to install, assuming the T-1 is already in place. Besides providing Internet connectivity, the servers also verify whether a piece of hardware, such as a laptop card or wireless router, should be assimilated into the network, keeping interlopers out.

A decision to deploy the technology throughout the whole city — or about 150 square kilometers — should be taken soon. But even if Las Vegas is one of the capitals of gambling, it wants to save money. So CWTI had to be creative, not only technologically, but also financially.

Cheetah’s typical proposition is for the municipality to give the company the right to attach its equipment to city-owned light poles and establish Wi-Fi hotspots around the city. These hotspots act as bridges that allow users with regular Wi-Fi cards to access the mesh network, and they let Cheetah tap into the consumer market — a typical Wi-Fi laptop card, of which millions have already been sold, costs about $80, while a mesh card is more like $800.

With the city’s help in promoting the service, Cheetah would charge users between $20 and $40 per month to access fixed Wi-Fi hotspots. Commercial users who want to access the mesh network directly so as to be able to roam the entire coverage area seamlessly will be charged about $60 to $80 per month. Revenues are shared between the city and Cheetah, with a portion of the city’s cut set aside to pay for the municipality’s use of the mesh network.

Sources: Stephen Cass, IEEE Spectrum, January 2005; Communications News, October 2004; and various websites

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Military forces are increasingly relying on wearable computers and other gadgetries designed by commercial companies, only slightly more ruggedized because of mission critical requirements. In this long article, Military & Aerospace Electronics gives various examples of how these wearable technologies are networking soldiers. For instance, the military version of Microvision’s Nomad helmet-mounted display delivers a virtual cockpit interface to commanders in the field. Or take Xybernaut, which is developing belt-mounted mobile and wearable computers with integrated satellite communications units allowing soldiers to export wirelessly and continuously their location. In the mean time, General Dynamics C4 Systems is building GoBook tablet computers powered by direct-liquid fuel cells which could become potential replacements for current ground air-traffic-control computers. Read more…

The original article describes other wearable technologies as well, so be sure to read it. Here I just want to focus on the Microvision’s Nomad helmet-mounted display.

In a company white paper, “Out the Hatch Situational Awareness,” Microvision officials describe how their wearable computer, Nomad, improves situational awareness for commanders in the field.

Situational awareness, the paper points out, drives the need for electronic information on opposing forces, neutrals and noncombatants, terrain maps, spot reports and messages, vehicle sensors such as driver vision enhancement and gunner displays, and “the time-tested human vision of the surrounding tactical environment.”

The Nomad helmet-mounted display enables the commander to keep his head outside the vehicle while also accessing ­vehicle displays. It provides electronic information that is visible under all lighting conditions and enables the commander/ leader to remain aware of his situation without ducking into the vehicle.

One hundred Nomad helmet-mounted display systems have been deployed in Iraq, Microvision officials say. “Feedback from the field has been overwhelmingly positive with comments like — the only problem with the Nomad is that we don’t have enough of them,” according to the company white paper.

“For the 3-20 Brigade, the Nomad Helmet Mounted Display consisted of a display module attached to the helmet, a video control module mounted to the vehicle, with a cable connected to the FBCB2 [Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade-and-Below] computer system. For the 1-25 Brigade the system has been ­upgraded to provide the ability to switch between the FBCB2, thermal weapon display, and thermal driver’s display with head-out-of-the-hatch operation. Nomad is a see-through, daylight readable display repeater in both applications.”

Don’t think it’s a huge market for commercial companies. The latest contract that Microvision got represents about $4 million. But the market is growing.

Tim Shea, senior analyst at Venture Development Corp. in Natick, Mass., says the wearable-computer market should grow to about $560 million worldwide by 2008 with government/military/homeland security applications taking up about $74 million, if the Army’s Land Warrior system is fielded by then.

“Government/military usage is primarily spread across battlefield, logistics, and vehicle/aircraft maintenance applications,” Shea says. “We’re also starting to see small transactions for wearables among first responders and other homeland security areas starting to grow.”

These technologies will not change my life, but I hope they’ll improve soldiers’ lives.

Sources: John McHale, Military & Aerospace Electronics, November 2004; and various web sites

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Engineers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have designed a phone which contains a compact radiation detector, making easy for police forces to check for radioactive material hidden in large cities. In “Cellphone sniffs out dirty bombs,” New Scientist writes that the phone measures continuously the level of radiation around it and transmits it to a central computer via an always-on Internet connection. The phone will also send time and location information gathered from its GPS unit. When these phones are deployed around the U.S., they will form a radiation monitoring network dubbed the RadNet. Such phones should be available for about $1,000 in a few months first to military personnel or police officers, then to U.S. Postal service personnel or delivery service workers. It should take more time before you can buy one yourself at a Wal-Mart store. Read more…

Here are the opening paragraphs from the New Scientist article.

A smart phone that can detect radiation may soon be helping the police to find the raw materials for radioactive “dirty bombs” before they are deployed. The phones will glean data as the officers carrying them go about their daily business, and the information will be used to draw up maps of radiation that will expose illicit stores of nuclear material.

The detector is the brainchild of engineers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, US, who developed it in response to the rise in illicit trafficking of radioactive materials (see graphic). Customs officers at ports and airports already wear pagers that detect radiation. But any radioactive material not picked up by border controls can be hidden in towns and cities, with little chance that it will be found.

And here is the solution proposed by the LLNL engineers.

Now LLNL engineers funded by the US Department of Homeland Security have devised a way to tackle the problem. They have turned a multi-function internet cellphone into a wireless sensor that will feed data into a new type of radiation monitoring network that they are calling a RadNet.

The phone transmits radiation readings continuously over an always-on internet connection to a central computer. A GPS receiver in the phone labels the data with a time and location, allowing it to be used to build up a radiation map of a particular area.

How much will cost such a device?

The challenge for the LLNL engineers was to devise a radiation sensor cheap enough to make the project viable. “It’s relatively straightforward to make a $10,000 radiation detection device that works well,” says project leader Bill Craig at LLNL’s Radiation Detection Center (RDC). “But the target price of these units is $1000. That’s the phone, the whole thing.”

This paper from the RDC, “Compact Radiation Detector and Global-Positioning-System Unit in a Cell Phone,” gives additional details about these phones (the above illustration comes from this paper).

New-generation gamma-ray sensors and a global-positioning-system (GPS) module are built into a cell phone. The device uses pixelated cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe, often abbreviated CZT) detectors coupled with an ultra-low-power readout with moderate energy resolution. The device requires no cooling and is battery-powered (24 to 48 hours on a single charge).

Because the poorer-quality sections of the CZT crystal are left unconnected, we can use less-expensive, commercial-grade detector materials. The material is literally “sliced and diced” from the ingot, with no material selection or individual detector testing required. This approach dramatically lowers the cost of each detector, which costs less than $350 now and will be less than $100 when the device is mass-produced.

Let’s return to New Scientist for more details about the detectors.

Craig’s team cut costs by compromising on the quality of the cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) semiconductor crystals that lie at the heart of the detectors. When a gamma-ray photon strikes the CZT it knocks a number of electrons out of position, producing a cascade of electron-hole pairs. A voltage applied across the crystal turns these into a current whose strength depends on the energy of the incident photons. This in turn allows the radionuclide that generated the gamma rays — caesium-137 or cobalt-60, for example — to be identified.

The reason why these detectors are relatively inexpensive is thta the team used cheap crystals.

They divide the crystal into 64 separate sensing “pixels” in which each pixel acts as a detector on its own. They then simply discard the output from the 10% to 15% of pixels that do not work because of defects. The team has found that by using four of these crystals in each phone, they can achieve reasonable sensitivity.

Let’s move back to the RDC paper to check for future uses of these phones.

The device reports its health when reporting its data; system maintenance consists of swapping out a malfunctioning unit in much the same way pager or cell phone companies do. The only maintenance requirement is charging the battery periodically. Each device can be used as a programmable radiation alarm, personal dosimeter, search instrument, and analysis tool.

A central processing system monitors the data from the network of devices and provides additional sensitivity by tracking below-threshold alerts, correlating measurements from different detectors passing the same location at different times, and iteratively adjusting system thresholds to account for transient events.

Such devices are ideally suited for military personnel, Transportation Security Administration screeners, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, U.S. Postal Service personnel, public safety personnel, delivery service workers, and even nuclear search teams.

For more information about nuclear security, you can visit the web sites of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its Office of Nonproliferation Research and Engineering.

Sources: Jenny Hogan, New Scientist, December 9, 2004; and various web sites

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I bet most of you have never heard about Argo, an ambitious scientific project about the observation of our oceans. This project is endorsed by 18 countries and just reached a milestone: there are today more than 1,500 robotic floats reporting about salinity changes or predicting El Niño events, among other ones. This news release from the University of California at San Diego says that the Argo floats, which are autonomous ocean-traveling robots programmed to sink more than a mile below the ocean surface, are helping scientists all over the world to look at the future of our whole planet. And in 2007, when the deployment is completed, 3,000 underwater robots will help us to better understand the changes in our climate. Read more…

Even in a press release, you can find some real facts.

Researchers with the international Argo program announced they have reached the point where 1,500 ocean-traveling float instruments — half the target 3,000-float array — are now operating. This marks an important milestone in the program’s mission to capture valuable data around the globe.

The Argo floats, which are robotically programmed to record and transmit data, are uniquely positioned to provide important information about climate and weather phenomena. Other applications of Argo information include: ocean heat storage and climate change; ocean salinity changes due to rainfall; ocean-driven events such as El Niño; impacts of ocean temperature on fisheries and regional ecosystems; interactions between the ocean and monsoons; and how the oceans drive hurricanes and typhoons.

If your screen as enough pixels, you should see above a cross section of one float (left) (Credit: Southampton Oceanographic Centre) and one of the three models of floats, the PROVOR, shortly before recovery by the Japanese coastguard vessel Takuyo (right) (Credit: Scripps/UCSD Argo information). You can find many more pictures in this picture gallery on the Scripps/UCSD Argo information site.

The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, (NOAA), provides additional information and pictures in this story.

“This was just a dream back in 1998,” said Conrad C. Lautenbacher, a NOAA administrator. “Today, the dream is a reality and these devices prove that a global network of robotic instruments can provide the information we need to enhance our understanding of climate, weather and our oceans.”

And if you like acronyms, you’ll appreciate this quote.

Argo is a major contributor to the World Climate Research Programme’s Climate Variability and Predictability Experiment (CLIVAR) project and to the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE). The Argo array is part of the Global Climate Observing System/Global Ocean Observing System (GCOS/GOOS).

Sources: University of California,San Diego, news release, November 30, 2004; and various websites

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In this article, Computerworld describes several of the projects currently under way at Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab. For instance, CyLab just received “a $6.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation for an initiative called Security Through Interaction Modeling (STIM), which studies complex interactions between people, the computers they use and attacks from the outside.” CyLab is also looking at self-healing or autonomic computer systems. And in its Coral project, CyLab is developing network defense mechanisms for virus and worm attacks. But here I just want to focus on the Seurat project, named after the French impressionist painter Georges Seurat who invented the technique of pointillism. The goal of this project is to monitor network anomalies caused by buffer overloads or corrupted systems. The project was called Seurat because like his paintings, the Web has so many layers or points where a possible attack might occur. Read more…

Please read the article mentioned above or this page to know more about the research projects at CyLab.

And now, here are some specific details about the Seurat project as provided by Computerworld.

Another CyLab project takes the name of the French impressionist painter Georges Seurat, who painted vast canvasses with many tiny dabs, or “points,” of paint, a process dubbed pointillism. The Seurat team at CyLab is developing methods to monitor anomalous behavior that may be induced by buffer overloads and other glitches.

The Seurat technique compares a precomputed profile of how a system should be performing to the combination of all the application interactions with the operating system. “So it looks at a profile of what this system should be doing and says maybe this thing has been corrupted,” explains Mike Reiter, technical director of CyLab and a professor of computer engineering and science. “It can track accesses and changes across many machines all at once or in a short time period.”

The diagram above describes the pointillist approach to anomaly detection. Normal points are clustered by the dashed circle. The appearance of a new cluster consisting of three points suggests anomalous events on host A, B, and D. (Credit: Seurat team at CMU’s CyLab).

The Seurat project is so named because there are many layers, points or places where one might measure what is going on in a system in order to see evidence of an attack, much the same way the 19th century painter discovered that what we see comprises many points of color and light.

The Seurat technique is a broad-brush approach to security, and indeed, the overall scope of CyLab’s $10 million annual research mission is broad, says Pradeep Khosla, dean of the Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering and co-director of CyLab.

Here is a more detailed description of the Seurat project, coming directly from CyLab.

The goal of the project is to detect compromised or misconfigured hosts by correlating file system changes across different machines. Most of the current intrusion techniques result in modification, insertion, or deletion of system configuration files, binary files, libraries, log files, or system kernel.

However, as the operation system and application software become more and more complex, users, even system administrators usually lose track of the up to date machine configuration status and file system updates.

We propose a new approach to detect aggregated anomalous events automatically based on host file system updates. Our approach is based on a key observation that many host state transitions of interest have both temporal and spatial locality. Abnormal state changes, which may be hard to detect in isolation, become apparent when they are correlated with similar changes on other hosts.

Based on this intuition, we have developed a prototype system, called Seurat, to detect similar, coincident changes to the patterns of file updates that are shared across multiple hosts. Our evaluation shows that Seurat can successfully detect worm attacks with a low false positive rate.

For each alarm, Seurat identifies the suspicious hosts and files for further investigation, greatly facilitating root cause diagnosis and false alarm suppression.

For even more information, you can visit the Seurat Project home page.

The researchers have published their work which appears in the Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection (RAID2004), held in September 2004 in Sophia Antipolis, France, under the title “Seurat: A Pointillist Approach to Anomaly Detection.”

Here is a direct link to the full paper (PDF format, 20 pages, 717 KB). The above diagram was extracted from this paper.

And for those of you who are also interested by Georges Seurat’s works, here is what Wikipedia says about him, and a link to a picture of his “Grey weather, Grande Jatte” painting from 1888.

Sources: Matt Hamblen, Computerworld, November 22, 2004; and various websites

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According to this very long article from Military & Aerospace Electronics, vehicle electronics (vetronics) technologies will be at the heart of all future manned and unmanned vehicles of the U.S. Army. Advanced vetronics technologies include automatic target recognition, computer-based decision aids, high-speed distributed computing, robotics, and high-speed networks. In particular, networking will involve high-speed mobile networks, theater-level wired networks, ultra-broadband satellite networks and advanced IP communications. The article looks at all the components of the Future Combat System (FCS), which will link commanders and troops to manned or unmanned vehicles. Below, I’m focusing on one element: why automation and unmanned vehicles are so important in vetronics developments. Read more…

So, let’s see why the U.S. Army is putting vetronics technology at the center of its future vehicles.

U.S. Army vehicle electronics (vetronics) designers are shifting virtually all their research-and-development money over to robotics and unmanned systems, and are looking to commercially developed technology to meet their future needs in manned vetronics systems.

“Over the last four to five years there has been a shift in our R&D investment,” says Dr. Grace Bochenek, executive vice president for research, and technical director of the U.S. Army Tank, Automotive & Armaments Command (TARDEC) in Warren, Mich. “We have migrated to investments in unmanned ground platforms. All the Army’s investment is in automation and unmanned systems.”

Army leaders see automation and unmanned systems as important ways not only to reduce the number of crew members necessary to operate combat vehicles on the battlefield, but also to reduce the number of human beings who must operate vehicles in dangerous areas.

For example, the future 20-ton combat vehicles, which are part of the Future Combat System (FCS) program, will have only two crew members. But they will receive plenty of assistance from their vehicles.

Not only would [these Intelligent systems] enable two-man crews to control their own vehicle, keep in touch with other vehicles in the area and with their commanders, and keep track of the locations of friendly and enemy forces, but the station also would enable them to control unmanned ground and air vehicles.

At the moment, this project revolves around the Crew Integration and Automation Test Bed Advanced Technology Demonstration, otherwise known as CAT-ATD. This project is to demonstrate the crew interfaces, automation, and integration technologies necessary to meet the future needs of two-man combat vehicle crews.

The CAT-ATD seeks to design a wrap-around reconfigurable display that would help crew members drive the vehicle with sensors and the wrap-around display, rather than by using a direct view outside the vehicle. The crew station will also demonstrate automated decision aids, ways for crewmembers to dip into a rich supply of real-time battlefield information, and help the crew practice missions and hone their skills with embedded simulation and computer-generated mission rehearsal.

The demonstrator is to showcase soldier-machine interface technology, indirect vision, speech recognition, 3-D audio, helmet-mounted displays and panoramic displays, as well as automated route planning, driving, and battle planning. The station will blend information from sensors, weapons, and unmanned vehicles.

There are also many projects about unmanned vehicles, including the Robotic Follower Advanced Technology Demonstrator (Robotic Follower ATD) project.

This program focuses on developing a low-risk, near-term autonomous vehicle to handle tasks such as equipment carrier, resupply, scouting, mine detection, rear-area security, unmanned-aerial-vehicle launch, and fire support.

This vehicle will incorporate second-generation laser radar, forward-looking infrared sensors, and advanced computers to handle autonomous navigation, which experts point out is one of the most difficult challenges to building autonomous vehicles.

One of the program’s goals is to build an autonomous vehicle capable of driving on primary roads at speeds of 50 to 60 miles per hour, and driving off-road at 40 miles per hour. The vehicle should operate at distances of three to six miles from the lead vehicle.

For more information about these developments, you can check two U.S. Army websites, the Vetronics Institute or the Vetronics Technology Area. The first image on the top comes from the CAT-ATD page on this site.

Sources: John Keller, Military & Aerospace Electronics, October 2004, Vol. 15, No. 10, P. 20; and various other websites

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