Design of an advanced robotic vehicle evaluation laboratory

Summary

Robotic vehicles have a wide field of applications in the civilian and military industry including manufacturing, assembly lines, security, operation in hostile environment, and testing. In the defense area, robotic vehicles have the potential for force multiplication and removing the soldier from hazardous environments on the battlefield. To make such vehicles avaialable requires research, development, testing and demonstration of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and systems. A realistic effort towards that objective requires the establishment of an advanced laboratory responsible for evaluation and development of subsystems and integration of the various elements into vehicles for field tests. Hence, requirements for the laboratory are given including a layout design and link analysis of the different components. As the first part of planning the laboratory, the technology was assessed to assure inclusion of the state-of-the-art equipment. Then, equipment requirements were defined, including interactions between pieces of equipment and providing for support, recording and monitoring equipment.