An autonomous mini-tank, developed for
the Ministry of Defence's Grand Challenge contest, could be at
the disposal of the
British Army in 18 months.
The technology known as Saturn was developed by Grand Challenge
winners Team
Stellar. Stellar is a collaborative group with research
companies working with software developed at Cranfield University
that carries out automatic target recognition.
Teams in the contest had to develop air and ground vehicles for
identifying threats faced by the armed forces such as snipers.
The robots were judged on their ability to detect marksmen,
vehicles mounted with heavy weapons, groups of armed foot soldiers
and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) such as roadside bombs.
The winning team used an integrated system combining a
high-flying unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a unmanned ground
vehicle (UGV) with a control station fusing data from visual,
thermal and radar sensors.
Team leader Julia Richardson said: "The MoD might cherry pick
bits of the system it likes, and might not fund the whole system
even though we won, but there are signs we will receive further
funding for Saturn and it could be in service within 18 months. I
very much hope we will be involved in developing the product
further."
Read more about the Ministry of Defence:
Ministry of Defence awards EDS supply chain system>>
Ministry of Defence IT project has practical
obstacles>>
