Nov 10 2010
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded the Carnegie Mellon University with a 17-month, $988,000 contract to augment the Transformer Program to develop a military vehicle with flight capabilities.
The actual airframe design will be either an autogyro jumpcopter or a ducted-fan job from Lockheed (pictured); the powerplant will be a wonder-diesel from Rocketdyne. But the almost hand-off autopilot will come from Carnegie Mellon (working with Honeywell Labs as a subcontractor).
The proposed vehicle will have the capacity of transporting four people and 1,000 pounds of payload up to 250 nautical miles, either by land or by air with a focus on mobility.
Transformer TX is intended to produce a Humvee-like vehicle that can drive on the ground on- or off-road, but also lift off vertically to fly about like a light helicopter or plane.
"The [Transformer Program] is all about flexibility of movement and key to that concept is the idea that the vehicle could be operated by a soldier without pilot training," said Sanjiv Singh, CMU research professor of robotics in a statement.
"In practical terms, that means the vehicle will need to be able to fly itself, or to fly with only minimal input from the operator. And this means that the vehicle has to be continuously aware of its environment and be able to automatically react in response to what it perceives", he elaborated. This is where Singh and his colleagues come in.
Singh himself has previously worked on a pilotless helicopter which could fly at low level, avoid obstacles, and choose its own landing site in unmapped terrain, past summer with the hope that the system could aid Medical evacuation rescuers who often have to navigate helicopters through difficult circumstances.
The well-known robotics department at Carnegie Mellon University famous among other things for accomplishments in the field of self-driving cars and for giving the world the 600-tonne automated Godzilla truck.It also produced the robot SUV named "Boss", which won the DARPA Urban Challenge race in 2007. The Transformer TX project, is intended to furnish hoverjeeps to US Marine units too small to have their own aircraft, also comes from DARPA.