The Army is at work developing plans for equipping all of its ground forces and aviation units with robots and autonomous systems that will both multiply human soldiers’ capabilities and perform dangerous tasks that would otherwise risk human life.

Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has said repeatedly that future warfare – beyond 2025 – will involve robots as a basic element of ground combat. Army scientists are preparing to make that vision a reality, but are taking a slow, deliberate approach to maximize the utility of robots in various ground combat roles, said Robert Sadowski, robotics senior research scientist and research, technology and integration director at the Army Tank, Automotive, Research and Engineering Center.

“We are trying to integrate robotic and autonomous systems across all the warfighting functions and across all the Army formations, from logistics to ISR down to the infantry squad, out to the armored platoon and in all the special areas,” Sadowski, who is also the Army’s chief roboticist, said March 8 at Georgia Tech University during a “Mad Scientist” conference exploring the distant future of Army requirements and capabilities. “Are we going to be able to afford to do all of it? Absolutely not. There is going to be some prioritization that occurs.”

PFC Marcus Beedle leads the mule-like robot known as the Legged Squad Support System on a patrol through open terrain at Fort Devens Mass.
PFC Marcus Beedle leads the mule-like robot known as the Legged Squad Support System on a patrol through open terrain at Fort Devens Mass.

Roles like autonomous resupply and convoy transportation seem perfectly suited to robotic trucks, but current systems are not capable of duplicating the instinctive reactions and decision-making skills of a human soldier, he said.

“If you’re trying to envision future combat, I tell people the first rounds probably aren’t going to be bullets, it’s probably going to be cyber, ones and zeros,” Sadowski said. “The second thing may be some form of robotics or autonomous systems and then a third, you’ll probably have soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in some form or fashion.”

If a soldier is removed from the cab of a truck leading a convoy, the robot or autonomous system that replaces that soldier must be able to replicate the reactions he or she would have to various scenarios like contact with the enemy.

“This is well beyond what the Budweiser delivery truck has to do where he’s traveling on a well-defined road network back in the states where I can GPS map everything entirely … and the enemy is not firing at me,” Sadowski said. “It is a different set of challenges we face within the operational context.”

Most existing combat and logistics vehicles are not readily compatible with autonomous controls or remote operation systems simply because they were designed decades ago specifically for operation by humans. They must be upgraded to accept the technologies, but likely will not immediately jump to autonomous operation.

A logical first step is leader-follower technologies where a human soldier drives a less-volatile truck like a water tanker in the front of a convoy and the other vehicles, carrying explosives, ammunition or fuel, follow directly behind that lead vehicle.

“Let the robot have the bullets and the fuel,” he said. “I’ll drive the water truck up front and that’s a way that you can get your way to autonomy in the formation short-term. We are working towards that.”