European Defense Agency Successfully Completes Unmanned-Manned Vehicles Testing
The European Defense Agency (EDA) has announced the successful completion of a project aimed at testing how unmanned grounds systems could work with manned vehicles during future mounted combat missions.
Among many goals, the project, known as ‘Hybrid Manned Unmanned Platooning (Hy-MUP),’ was used to help military personnel become more comfortable with heavy unmanned ground vehicles.
According to the EDA, the Hy-MUP project had several objectives. Firstly, the project sought to demonstrate the practicality of unmanned ground systems working in collaboration with regular vehicles in future mounted combat missions. In order to determine the practicality of such teaming, use cases for platooning were analyzed and defined.
The project was also used to identify high safety requirements, and develop a demonstrator of a hybrid fleet, which includes both unmanned and manned vehicles, so that they can be deployed in missions involving convoy reconnaissance and/or surveillance (platooning), with help from a mobile Control and Command Vehicle (CCV) that is driven by a person.
Those missions would also include a mobile robotized vehicle that could either be tele-operated by an operator from the CCV's control station, or programmed to autonomously follow a ‘Leader Vehicle.’
During the Hy-MUP project, a variety of case scenarios involving the teaming of manned and unmanned vehicles were tested out. In one scenario, a 4x4 wheels drive civilian vehicle (ISUZU D-MAX) was equipped with Drive by Wire capability, as well as sensors that allowed for autonomous motion by using ‘Leader Following’ facilities.
During this set of testing, two different ‘Leader Following’ functionalities were applied and evaluated, using various leader vehicles, weather conditions and environments.
The Hy-MUP project was funded by two contributing Member States, France and Germany. ECA Robotics and Thales Optronique SAS for France, along with Diehl BGT Defence and Rheinmetall Landsysteme for Germany, carried out the project.
The Hy-MUP project was a continuation of the ‘Semi-Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SAM-UGV)’ project, which was carried out by the same entities from France and Germany that carried out this project. Both projects were hosted in EDA’s CapTech Ground Systems (Land).
