Autonomy Is Next Step in Robotics

Manually controlled robots have established their value on numerous battlefields, mostly in reconnaissance and bomb detection and disposal activities. While that’s unlikely to change in the near-term, robot makers are looking ahead to the next generation of design: autonomous capabilities barely dreamed of a decade ago.

Helen Greiner, cofounder of iRobot Corp., a supplier of robots to the U.S. military, says there has been a “push toward getting not just teleoperated robots [in the field], but to make some functionally autonomous.” Making bots and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) autonomous, she adds, is “one of the biggest requests we’re getting.”

Joe W. Dyer, president of iRobot’s Government and Industrial Robotics Div., says the company has spent the past 18 months developing the Autonomous Vehicle Kit—a conversion kit for a manned vehicle that allows it to operate autonomously. “It’s a much cheaper way into autonomy,” he says, “and it retains the capability of the vehicle to be man-operated.”

The company is discussing the kit with the U.S. Army, but Dyer says that across the Defense Dept. there are no “programs of record or procurement efforts” for such capabilities. “We’re in one of those times where technologies are being developed and there’s a technology push that’s waiting for a requirements pull.