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2020-09-01

Over £1 M Innovation Contracts Awarded to Help UK Army Engineers

The UK’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) recently awarded contracts worth a total of £1.3m to develop semi-autonomous reconnaissance and survey systems. The deal will help troops to safely and stealthily advance into enemy territory across water obstacles such as rivers.

‘Map the Gap’, run on behalf of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), sought ideas from industry and academia to create a new remote system capable of surveying potential crossing sites by gathering data about the riverbanks.

Five small and medium-sized businesses have been awarded Phase 1 funding to fast-track their innovative solutions and test with the British Army.

The organisations include:

Scytronix – whose proposal is for a drone mountable crossing assessment system that uses novel low frequency electromagnetic scanning techniques.

Wight Ocean – to develop an amphibious bottom crawler to navigate and transit water crossing to gather near real-time data for analysis.

Nordic Unmanned AS – to demonstrate unmanned aerial systems sensors, and data exploitation, and a semi-autonomous capability for engineer reconnaissance.

Digital Concepts Engineering – to develop an unmanned ground vehicle and drone ‘team’ with a variety of sensors to gather, aggregate and present data.

Foundry Cube in collaboration with Ultrabeam Hydrographic – to demonstrate an autonomous and amphibious hydrographic survey vehicle similar to a pedalo, using novel techniques tools and Sonar and Lidar (using laser light and measuring reflection).

Surprising the Enemy

The military need to be able to cross obstacles such as rivers, streams, bogs and other so-called ‘wet gaps’.

Currently, the only way of identifying suitable crossing points is to send Royal Engineer reconnaissance troops to survey both banks of the river – exposing them to danger, which also risks compromising the operation by signalling interest in that location to the enemy.

The vision is ultimately to remove personnel from these dangerous tasks with a remote system that allows more crossing locations to be surveyed, increasing the choices available to commanders and giving an opportunity to surprise the enemy.

An additional £2.5m is anticipated for further development in Phase 2.

Robust Platforms

Digital Concepts Engineering Ltd (DCE) will lead its part of the ‘Map the Gap’ industry team with a vehicle based on their rugged X series of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), which incorporates DCE’s Marionette robotic vehicle architecture.

DCE’s X series of ROVs are designed as cost-effective, robust and versatile platforms for use in defence, the nuclear industry, agriculture and beyond. Built around a common chassis and low-latency control system, the vehicles can handle deep mud, steep slopes and rubble. Each vehicle’s top decks are configurable to ensure that they are suitable, whatever the application. They can be supplied as tele-operated platforms or with a Robotic Operating System (ROS) interface to enable autonomous control.

Other organisations and technologies supporting DCE’s bid are Jacobs’ 6th Sense data analytics, drones and autonomous routing provided by Frazer-Nash Consultancy and Eijkelkamp Geopoint SoilSolutions’ ground sampling expertise. ‘Map the Gap’ ground surveys will be carried out using a submersible ROV carrying data sensors, soil sampling tools and sonar equipment, while the surrounding area will be scanned from the air by drone.

Modular Approach

One of the noteworthy innovations is Marionette, a robotic control system enabling remote or autonomous control over a diverse range of vehicles and equipment. It has been successfully deployed on vehicles from 250kg to 30,000kg in weight, including Wheelbarrow MK7, the 8x8 ATV Hippo-X vehicle and the British Army’s FV510 Warrior AFV. It can also be used as a complete electronic architecture solution and has been widely used to replace obsolete systems in legacy vehicles, bringing them back into service.

Marionette takes a modular approach to control and can interface with almost any mechanical, hydraulic, electrical, electronic or diagnostic system. New modules can be rapidly added to integration of additional systems (e.g. cameras, weapon systems, CBRNe sensors and manipulator arms) as situations allow. This means the vehicle can be rapidly re-purposed in the field, meeting the needs of users whatever the situation. A ‘train once and deploy’ toolkit of modules, Marionette reduces the demands on engineering teams and offers a common interface to any equipped vehicle.

Reference Text/Photo:www.gov.uk, www.dconcepts.co.uk

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