The U.S. Army will employ an interoperable and open source model to build the service’s future robotic platforms for ground warfare, Federal News Radio reported Thursday.Jared Serbu writes that Heidi Shyu – assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology at the Army – said the branch is working with industry to form an standard architecture for the Man Transportable Robotic System project.
The robot is scheduled for a 2021 deployment and will replace the TALON remotely operated military vehicle, according to the station.
“[MTRS] will address several shortfalls in our current capability, namely the need for a common chassis that supports multiple payloads, which will reduce sustainment costs, logistics footprint and integration risks,” Shyu told the station.
Serbu reports the Army is also crafting a set of hardware and software protocols to help developers make a robotic unmanned platform’s subsystems operate together.
The Unmanned Ground Vehicle Interoperability Profile will offer guidance on developing open interfaces for manned-to-unmanned system conversion, according to Serbu’s article.
“Since our priority has been on modularity up until now, once we get the modularity piece defined, we’ll start focusing more on interoperability, meaning external interoperability,” Mark Mazzara, Army systems coordinator for robotics, told the station.
“We want to provide modularity between the controllers, the platforms and the payloads,” he added.
