Autonomous ground vehicles, or AGVs, are a developing technology
with many potential applications for the United States Army,
but independent and rapid travel off road can be challenging
for AGVs when using only onboard sensors.
Off-road travel could be much easier if the AGV is partnered
with a UAV that can identify safe, obstacle-free routes for the ground vehicle.
The Army Ground Vehicle Systems Center and MIT Lincoln Laboratory
have partnered to develop such an air-ground teaming system.
The real-world data of
the Autonomous Mobility through Intelligent Collaboration, A.I. Accelerator Program, or AMIC
enable the deployment of machine learning algorithms for the system.
In the fall of 2021,
the team demonstrated a prototype air-ground teaming system
at Fort Devon's Massachusetts.
In this example,
the AGV travels alone without a map or predefined route,
relying only on its lidar for perception and obstacle detection.
Along the way, it sometimes struggles to quickly recognize off-road obstacles,
requiring the safety driver to intervene.
In a teamed system,
a UAV equipped with a camera and scanning lidar
partners with the ground vehicle.
The UAV’s computer uses machine learning and other algorithms to explore the area
and identify a safe route— all autonomously, onboard, and in real time.
Terrain types play a key part in determining a route,
so the UAV applies a machine learning algorithm, trained on images
from the AMIC Data Hub, to identify terrain types such as road,
grass, trees, water, and manmade objects.
To begin the mission, the UAV launches from the AGV.
The UAV autonomously plans how it should explore the area,
applying its neural network in real time to identify the terrain.
Lidar captures surface details of the terrain
to combine with the terrain type identified in the camera.
Then the UAV uses this data to build a rich 3D map of the area
near the ground vehicle.
When the goal is indicated in the map,
the UAV can compute a full route and transmit it to the HGV in real time.
Once the HGV has a full route, it can navigate using its onboard sensors
to avoid any obstacles not detected by the UAV.
Using the UAV’s route guidance,
the ground vehicle completes the route nearly twice as fast
as in the baseline test and without any safety driver interventions.
This air-ground teaming demo, which leverages the Army Ground Vehicle
System Center’s AMIC Data Hub, points to exciting possibilities
for future teamed missions.