MADE IN AMERICA Allied android to brave battle for coalition casualties

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1 SOLDIER M A G A Z I N E O F T H E B R I T I S H A R Win a Sony Blu-ray player SEPTEMBER MADE IN AMERICA Allied android to brave battle for coalition casualties LOITERING WITH INTENT Mean streak to new arrival in British arsenal

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3 One of your patrol is down behind enemy lines, still under contact and with the Taliban closing in numbers, any rescue mission looks destined to increase the casualty count. All is not lost though, the US Army is working on a solution to provide the... BEAR NECESSITIES... for a successful extraction Report: Andy Simms L EAVE no man behind the military mantra immortalised by Hollywood hit Black Hawk Down is being selfl essly stuck to by British and American troops on the front line of the war on terror. The unwritten code among soldiers has been demonstrated to the extreme in the Talibanplagued badlands of Afghanistan. Early last year four commandos launched a daring and extraordinary mission to rescue the body of a comrade from an enemy stronghold in Helmand by strapping themselves to two Apache gunships. And in September 2007, Capt Simon Cupples (2 Mercian) was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for leading a team to recover casualties during a ferocious engagement with heavily-armed Taliban fighters in Garmsir, Helmand province. Sadly such acts of gallantry often come at a tremendous price. Last summer Cpl Rodney Wilson (4 Rifles) was shot and killed as he stepped into heavy fire during an attempt to rescue a wounded colleague in the district of al-atiyah in southern Iraq and more than half of the medals of honour earned by US combat medics are awarded posthumously. In a bid to preserve the lives of those racing to the aid of the fallen, the US military is developing a robot to help carry injured soldiers away from the battlefield. SEPTEMBER

4 Standing at 6ft tall, it is anticipated that the Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (Bear) will be scooping up even the heaviest of casualties and transporting them to safety over long distances and over rough terrain within four years. Combining a hybrid tracked/legged design with dynamic balancing and a highstrength upper body capable of lifting up to a 500lb load (more than twice its own weight), Bear has been developed to go just about anywhere a human can. When kneeling the robot s tracked legs allow it to travel tank-like over rubble and when standing it can step over obstacles, go up and down stairs and even climb. Immune to nuclear, biological and chemical agents, Bear can also pick up the wounded in areas where the threat to human life cannot be assessed. Andreas Hofmann, a project manager at Vecna Technologies, which is developing the robot for the US Army, told Soldier: You only have to turn on the news to hear an example of a soldier getting wounded or killed while trying to recover an injured colleague. The Bear is designed to extract those casualties without a human having to put themselves in the line of fire. Its mission is to get the wounded soldier to a safe location where they can then be treated by a medic. Although Bear is still a prototype it is fully functional, Hofmann added. Within two years we expect to be field testing and within four years it will be ready to deploy. There are a lot of sceptics out there but there are also a lot of visionaries and sooner rather than later this sort of capability is inevitable. There are a lot of things that people said we would not be able to do that we have already done and that helps to dispel some of the scepticism. If we can use the Bear to reliably extract combat casualties we ll save a lot of lives in combat situations. But as that task is so challenging, a robot which can do that could have a lot of other applications as well. 50 SEPTEMBER 2008 SOLDIER - Magazine of the British Army

5 While the existing prototype slides its hydraulic arms under its burden like a forklift before lifting in a single smooth movement, to avoid causing pain to wounded soldiers, Hofmann and the team at Vecna are busy fine-tuning Bear s bedside manner. Future versions of the android ambulance will be fitted with manoeuvrable hands to gently scoop up casualties and although Bear is not blessed with the dexterity of a surgeon, it is being taught to assess injuries and based on its diagnosis adjust the way it holds an injured soldier. The mechanised medic s teddy bear-style features have also been designed with the patient in mind and are intended to put the wounded at ease, according to Hofmann. It s important that Bear has a friendly appearance, he said. There are some researchers particularly in Japan that are trying to make robots that look very, very human. They give them human-like skin and hair but the problem with them is that they look creepy because it is very hard to get it looking right. A better approach is to try to make the robot cute in a cartoon type of way. The reaction we don t want from soldiers is, if I saw something like that coming towards me I d shoot it even if it was coming to rescue me. There is, however, more to Bear than just good looks and it is the robot s superior intellect that developers hope will win the hearts of its human colleagues. Although Bear is controlled remotely and Bear is designed to extract those casualties without a human having to put themselves in the line of fire has cameras and microphones through which an operator sees and hears, the level of autonomy it offers is significantly greater than the simple remote-control driving and tele-operation common in today s established battlefield robots. Troops deploying Bear will simply tell it what task needs to be performed and the robot will figure out the how itself. Soldiers don t have to tell Bear every little detail as to what needs to be done, explained Vecna s Patrick Sweetser. There will be no need to tell it go 200ft, turn left and avoid this and that. The soldier operating Bear doesn t have to worry about the details of the robot s exact movements. Using lasers and sensors, Bear s preprogramming means that it is smart enough to realise how to navigate obstacles and smart enough not to endanger itself. The soldier will be more of a coach than an operator. Despite its high IQ, Bear will of course run the same risks as human rescuers, but as the first-generation of EOD robots in theatre have shown, putting hi-tech humanoids in harm s way, rather than troops, is a price worth paying. One shot could hit the brain and put Bear out of action, admitted Sweetser. We re currently developing different types of metal and Teflon to use as a shield, but will Bear be immune to everything? Obviously, no. However, if Bear does happen to get blown up, there will be no need for a commanding officer to send a letter home to its parents. n THE BEAR FACTS l Teddy bear face designed to be reassuring l Head contains a visiblelight camera as one eye, and an infrared camera as the other l Articulated neck provides pan and tilt motions allowing Bear to see a wide section of its surroundings l Hydraulic torso can carry up to 500lbs (227kgs) l Arms have six degrees of freedom and have a flat, broad and soft surface to maximise comfort when lifting humans l A hybrid tracked/legged design allows for a variety of modes of locomotion SOLDIER - Magazine of the British Army SEPTEMBER