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The military has an anticipated need for a remotely controlled ground system to perform reconnaissance; surveillance; target acquisition; patrolling; and nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) detection. In particular, the U.S. Army Infantry School would like the system to operate in the most dangerous areas of the modeM battlefield—open terrain that is highly trafficable. This has led to the premise that the system should be fast. Also, discovering the enemy's location is often dangerous with the cost assessed in human lives. From these requirements emerged the Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) programs. Emphasis is on effective robotic technology that has multiservice applications and is unique to unmanned vehicles on the gr1 The maturity of these robotic technologies was started to be confirmed in (1) UGV Demo I, held in 1992; and will continue to be confirmed in (2) UGV Demo II, scheduled in 1996. UGV Demo I focused primarily on teleoperation, while the UGV Demo II is designed to complement the first demonstration by focusing on supervised autonomy. The primary goal of the UGV Demo II program is to demonstrate the utility of advanced UGV systems to conduct tasks that enhance the Department of Defense force structure. This demonstration will combine both offensive and defensive operations in a militarily relevant situation. For offensive operation, four cooperating UGVs will initiate a movement-tocontact scenario. The vehicles will conduct a screening operation for a manned force using bounding overwatch over semiarid terrain. Once in overwatch positions, they will use a reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition (RSTA) mission module to observe threats; and to locate, detect, assess, and designate threats for indirect fire. For defensive operation, the vehicles will conduct a retrograde scenario. Four cooperating UGVs will screen a manned force by sequentially occupying preplanned defensive positions to maximize damage to advancing enemy forces. Once the commander determines that enemy forces have been weakened, the vehicles will move to preplanned locations in the main battle area to help designate remnants of advancing enemy forces.
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