Unmanned Ground Military and Construction Systems Technology Gaps Exploration

The article is based on the work carried out on Unmanned Ground Systems Landscaping and Integration Study UGS-LIS that has been done for European Defence Agency (EDA) by such European entities like: GMV Innovating Solution, Industrial Research Institute for Automation and Measurements and Military University of Technology. There are found in this paper the solutions to the scientific question whether it is possible to figure out the methodology to explore technology gaps looking through operational requirements defined for military systems to apply it to construction industry applications technology gaps exploration. There were specified the operational capabilities that are explicitly focused on the UGS platform (i.e., requirements directly related to those characteristics intuitively associated with the platform: power autonomy, load capacity, mobility, signature, expendability and endurance). These requirements enabled a preliminary analysis on UGS platforms: which kind of platforms might be developed and which of them might be shared between the systems devoted to different military and construction industry applications tasks. The selection of tasks for military applications was performed by means of a task survey guided by the Generic Military Task List (GMTL) defined in the EDA’s Capability Development Plan (CDP). Then based on this approach the capabilities to fulfil construction site tasks were specified. There were presented technology gaps identified by comparing the operational requirements with the state of play of technologies that are currently available in the military and construction equipment applications areas. Then the challenges and measures were identified and associated to the these gaps that should be taken in order to bridge each specific gap. There were identified those technological and non-technological aspects that may hamper the development of UGS solutions that fully achieve the operational requirements, and thus would need to be further studied and/or elaborated. These aspects were referred to as gaps that needed to be bridged, and were classified into seven technological fields (high mobility base platform; human-machine interfaces, machine-machine interfaces, teleoperation and control systems, data transmission systems, environment recognition, manipulation capabilities; autonomous operation and supply and engine systems). As a next step actions were specified. They represent the research and development initiatives, steps or activities that should be done in order to be in the position of developing (autonomous) UGS solutions achieving the specified operational requirements and requirements of construction site. The actions were completed to bridge the technology gaps to make required new capabilities (necessary for achieving the operational and construction site requirements) available.