Source: Science and Technology Daily
Scientific research quasi-star aimed at the battlefield
Build unmanned equipment equipped with "eighteen martial arts"
Robots in the hospital of the square cabin, assessing the performance of weapons, fast moving targets, completely independent innovation can be man-carried robots. The fast-moving target to assess the performance of weapons, completely independent innovation can be man-portable robot ...... National Defense University of Science and Technology, College of Intelligent Science "unmanned combat system" scientific and technological innovation team, focusing on the future of the battlefield, so that a batch after batch of people with the "Eighteen martial arts" of unmanned equipment from the laboratory to the future battlefield.
Itchy face, swollen eyes can only open a slit ...... Even with such serious allergy symptoms, the National Defense University of Science and Technology, College of Intelligent Science "unmanned combat system" technology innovation team member Peng Yuzhe, still stick in the plant! Together with other members of the team, they have been inserting snaps, wiring, and wrapping tapes for several days ...... like a high-speed gyroscope. 5 people in just 5 days, a pile of wheels, frames, and other parts of the "transformation" into three unmanned target vehicles, and completed the vehicle testing and delivery of the vehicles within the specified time. The company has completed the vehicle testing and delivery within the stipulated time.
"Urgent troops in a hurry, seek to win the need, this is our team's consistent style." Peng Yuzhe said. Over the years, the team aimed at the unmanned combat field of cutting-edge technology focus on research, has undertaken a large number of national and military key scientific research projects, access to the army and provincial and ministerial level scientific and technological achievements of the first prize of two, the second prize of four, the third prize of six, to the ground of unmanned systems represented by a number of technologies in the domestic leading level, the new quality of the military combat force for the upgrading of the scientific and technological foundation.
"errand boy" to enhance the ability of battlefield rescue
Last year, an infectious disease and battlefield trauma rescue actual military practical training in Jiangsu Kunshan quietly played.
The field built square cabin hospital, a different type of robot not fast and slow shuttle in the narrow medical cabin. They can skillfully turn, sideways, in order to avoid obstacles, in the pharmacy and the sick area between the distribution of drugs, medical equipment and other items, and even the recovery of medical garbage, transportation of patients with minor ailments, acting as a medical staff of the "errand boy", by the training officers and soldiers unanimously praised. These new "errand boy", it is the team developed the hospital patients / diagnostic materials coordinated scheduling system in a member.
In April last year, the team researcher Wu Tao received a unit for the intelligent rapid deployment of hospital accounts combined with the unfolding of scenarios and infectious disease mode of hospital unmanned logistics needs of the notice, he immediately organized the team members to start the collective wisdom of the attack.
Six months later, everyone with a large, medium, small three-type unmanned transit robot, full of confidence to Kunshan and the units to start the joint adjustment.
"You are not even allowed to locate this robot, how can you perform the task." After the platform preview, the words of the demand side like a pot of cold water poured head-on to them. Originally, these robots began to use the LiDAR positioning program, but due to the coordination of the environment of the hospital scene a single, narrow space and personnel gathered from time to time, the robot walking on the "confused", "froze" in place difficult to discern the direction.
The team members thought: "In the faster pace, stronger intensity of the actual combat, time is life, can not be logistically out of order." They quickly modified the program, began to build vector maps, and proposed a set of en route coarse positioning and local high-precision positioning combined with intelligent navigation program - adding visual information to guide on the basis of the original LiDAR sensor. To this end, they worked around the clock, every door in the yard, every charging pile and other confusing objects with different labels, collecting tens of thousands of samples entered into the system.
Carrying out research on multi-robot adaptive competitive cloud scheduling technology, cloud brain-assisted robot task collaboration system development ...... After many substantial adjustments to the program and algorithms, the "errand boy" finally has a super! "five senses", can perceive the surrounding environment like humans, even if the task is more, the surrounding crowd, it can also be undisturbed to perform various logistics tasks.
Today, the system realizes autonomous positioning of robots in narrow medical compartments, autonomous obstacle avoidance, path planning, conflict resolution, remote intervention and other functions, which can meet the diverse logistics needs of different scenarios in square hospitals, reducing the workload of hospital personnel, improving distribution efficiency while also reducing the risk of infection brought about by personnel contact, thus helping to enhance the battlefield rescue capabilities.
"Accompanying the trainer" to sharpen a number of national weapons
With the team's reputation is getting louder and louder, a matter of national defense and military construction of the overall situation of the task come and go, and a lot of the troops for many years can not be solved the problem also came to the door.
That year, a unit of a weapon strike performance assessment. After several studies, they proposed to abandon the practice of using a fixed target in the previous training test, so that the target to be hit like the enemy to move up.
How do you make a target move? They found the team, hoping to develop a "trainer" for them - high-speed movement target, used for equipment testing and identification.
On the one hand, there is a strong demand from the troops, and on the other hand, there is a lot of difficulty in the unknown field, the team's choice is to go forward. They first organized the competent backbone, deep into the Gobi Beach, on-site collection of key parameters.
In order to simulate the attacked target more realistically, the team needs to overcome the problem of high-speed and high-precision coordinated control of multiple heavy trucks, which not only requires the fleet to travel at a fixed speed, but also to maintain a positive or negative error of no more than one meter between the two vehicles. Any mistake, any negligence will lead to the total failure of the test.
Theoretical analysis, simulation tests, docking of technical requirements, vehicle selection, communication system testing ...... Instructor Tan Yun led the team through countless program discussions, docking of technical details, and field tests at the range, and finally overcame this problem. Team members excitedly said, "Just a few more full-function tests, you can stabilize the technical state waiting for acceptance and delivery."
But in a formation test, the rear ABS fault light suddenly flashed up. Is it an accidental fault alarm, or the car itself has a problem? Will it lead to other problems? In order to answer this series of questions, team members came to the scorching heat of the Gobi Beach, under the scorching sun to carry out different speeds, different distances under the formation test, and analyze the breakdown of each item, and soon found the root cause of the problem, and then immediately carry out the relevant technical improvements to ensure that the equipment is foolproof.
Last summer, an equipment test was in full swing. Along with the roar, a weapon whistled out, accurately hit the simulated attack target.
"This system, works." The person in charge of the development department of the equipment being tested thumbs up. This is the highest praise for the scientific research team that will "aim" at the battlefield.
In fact, this is not the first time that the team has forged a "trainer" for weapons and equipment. Since 2014, in the face of the force combat training and weapons and equipment testing and identification needs continue to improve, they have developed a large, small and medium-sized different types of self-propelled, towing and other more than ten categories of moving target target system. Desert Gobi, Bohai Sea coast ...... days south and north of the front-line troops, in the "trainer" to help, sharpened a batch and a batch of the country's sharp weapon.
Development of a man-carrying "backpack" robot
The U.S. Army in Afghanistan has used PackBot robots instead of soldiers to carry out their tasks, more than 6,000 put on the battlefield PackBot about one-sixth in the implementation of the task. The robot has saved thousands of lives. This means that the robots saved the lives of thousands of soldiers.
This "backpack" robot, used in combat, attracted the attention of the team, who aspired to "build our army's man-portable robot, and more advanced than the US army." For the team, this is a new subject, the difficulty can be imagined, alone on the robot should be used in what kind of walking system has troubled them for several months.
"Portable robots need strong obstacle-crossing and traveling capabilities, and they need to have wheeled and tracked traveling capabilities." Instructor Xu Navy introduced, the traditional ground platform only a single driving function, or the wheel, track simple repeated stacked together, but this often results in a large number of structural and functional redundancy, so that the "portable" become "not portable".
Just when everyone was at a loss, Prof. Xu Xiaojun saw a scene on the side of the road where a disabled person folded up his wheelchair and put it in the trunk of his car. This instantly inspired him: "We can learn from the principle of folding wheelchair, design the wheel rim as a several-flap structure, and then manipulate its deformation through the drive structure, so as to realize the multi-modal function."
He immediately organized everyone to refine and improve this inspiration, and launched research on its structural design, deformation principle, driving characteristics, etc. In 2018, after hundreds of tests, the completely independent innovation can be carried by a single soldier wheel track leg multimodal robot functional prototype came out. Also in this year, the robot made its debut in the third "Overcoming Obstacles 2018" Land Unmanned Systems Challenge. On the field, the robot lived up to expectations, once unveiled attracted the attention of everyone, the future battlefield ushered in the "mecha warrior" is just around the corner.
"Robot performance in the end how, need to test in the field environment. The challenge to choose the field of play, the environment is often close to the actual combat, which happens to give us these from the laboratory 'walk' out of the product, provides an excellent opportunity to test." Xu Xiaojun said.
Now, the team focuses on the future battlefield, developed a batch and batch of unmanned equipment with "eighteen martial arts", these equipment is being tested in the field, to the future of the battlefield.