Unmanned Systems Technology 023 I Milrem Multiscope I Wireless charging I Logistics insight I InterGeo, CUAV London & USA show reports I VideoRay Defender I OS Engines GR400U-FI I Ultrabeam Hydrographic Ultra-2 I IMUs

32 Dossier | Milrem Multiscope To tackle this object recognition problem, Milrem is developing a neural network-based machine learning system, the hardware for which is based on Nvidia graphics processing units, which are becoming the go-to chips for this kind of image processing task. “We want to complement these systems with different sensors giving information about the same direction of view, so our object recognition system has more information about each point,” Noorma says. “We’ll extend the wavelength coverage from visible though IR and radar, and also use ultrasonic sensors. “We believe that with sensor fusion we can get added value. We have an IMU to extrapolate the location, but it has to be complemented by image recognition based on all these different sensors. That would give us a way to navigate.” While Milrem – like the rest of the UGV industry – eagerly awaits the development of high-performance solid- state lidars that are rugged enough to survive the rigours of an off-road environment, it is also looking to develop high-resolution sensors that take, in Noorma’s words, a “quite different” approach to lidar sensing. “We can’t be successful in the long term just by taking technology off the shelf; we have to develop some things in-house,” he says. So far, the Multiscope can navigate autonomously in certain pre-mapped environments and, with GNSS support, in an unmapped one. Exactly what can be done autonomously depends heavily on applications, Noorma says. For example, agricultural robots can be provided with navigation systems of centimetric precision in controlled environments. Military operations are the most complicated, although these vary. With a logistics operation, for example, a route can be driven once under human control and then repeated by the UGV on its own. Alternatively, a drone can make a map of the route and download it to the UGV. Standardisation efforts There has been a lot of discussion about possible standardisation of UGVs for defence applications in Europe. “It’s too early to try to standardise the internals of the mobility platform,” Noorma says. “They are too new, not sufficiently tested, and nobody knows exactly what the best approach is for UGVs in this category. But we should standardise the interfaces between the platform and the [onboard] control unit and the remote control and payloads.” One possibility is to separate the autonomous elements of the control system from typical platform controllers. That, he says, is because there are many companies specialising in developing platform-independent autonomy systems, and it would be useful if they could be applied in a plug-and-play manner – with standardised mechanical and software interfaces – to a wide range of vehicles, manned or unmanned. “That would also make it easier for different companies to provide different autonomous functions in a UGV. Thus development efforts could be combined to provide users with more capable vehicles,” Noorma concludes. December/January 2019 | Unmanned Systems Technology Length: 2.4 m Width: 2.15 m Height: 1.1 m Maximum gross weight: 2200 kg Payload: 750 kg Configuration: two independent track modules supporting a central payload platform Power system: series hybrid with diesel generator charging lead-acid battery pack with eight 12 V, 80 mAh AGM batteries with inverters for 110/220 V high-voltage system; two smaller batteries for low-voltage system. Can be configured as pure electric Propulsion: continuous rubber tracks driven by permanent magnet synchronous motors Steering: differential braking, including regenerative Speed: up to 20 kph Endurance: 10 hours hybrid, 1.5 hours pure electric, extending to three hours with second battery pack replacing generator Comms: Secure mesh networking Networking: Ethernet, serial, USB Obstacle avoidance: lidar and camera system with in-house software Some key suppliers Diesel generator: Caterpillar Diesel generator: Kubota Diesel generator: Perkins Electric motor: Heinzmann Electric motor: Vogel & Plotscher Weapons station: FN Herstal Weapons station: Electro-Optical Systems Weapons station: Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace Weapons station: MBDA Weapons station: ST Kinetics Missiles: MBDA Missiles: Raytheon Missiles: Lockheed Martin Mapping sensor platform: Leica Geosystems Map interface: Luciad Rubber tracks: Mac’s Trax Sensor processing graphics processing units: Nvidia Rubber suspension modules: Rosta Radio links: Silvus Technologies Radio links: DTC Radio links: Persistent Systems UGV remote controller: Threod Lidar sensors: Velodyne Data sheet