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48 existing electric vehicle for airport and industry logistics, the Charlatte T135, and leveraged Navya’s experience in installing and programming autonomous navigation and safety systems,” says Gregoire Frezet, product manager for the Autonom Tract at Navya. “By making an autonomous version of this vehicle, we can improve the safety and efficiency of logistical flows in airports and other sites by eliminating human error. That allows workers to focus on other, less repeatable tasks that cannot be automated so easily.” Charlatte Manutention and Navya therefore collaborated to modify the Charlatte T135’s electric powertrain to accept the necessary sensors and computers for perception and autonomous behaviours. The resulting AT135 weighs 4.215 t, and measures 3.27 x 1.62 x 2.15 m. At the front of the vehicle, two Lidars are installed, one atop the cabin, the other at the front bumper. Three more are also installed, for a 360 º FoV – one on the left, one on the right and one at the rear. “We also have a camera at the front and another at the rear for additional detail, as well as many other sensors for odometry and other key navigation data,” Frezet adds. These include wheel encoder sensors, an IMU and an RTK-GNSS receiver. All of these sensors are integrated via the NavyaDrive intelligence software, which provides sensor data fusion, command responses and analytics. The Autonom Tract AT135’s powertrain has been kept the same as on the T135. The battery pack provides up to 32 kWh of energy, powering an electric traction motor that has a peak power rating of 23 kW. Up to 25 t of baggage (on wheeled containers) can be pulled, with 18 kN of force produced by the vehicle. The traction motor also gives the AT135 a top speed of 25 kph in both manual and autonomous modes. “The only drivetrain aspect we had to change was the steering control, in order to enable the sensors to deliver commands to the driving system effectively,” Frezet says. At the time of writing, the AT135 was undergoing trials to determine how best to integrate it into use-cases, in order to manage such autonomous aspects amid the potential dangers and incompatibilities of airport organisational and logistical frameworks. Another aim is to study how the solution could be tailored further to different user requirements. Fleet management software is also being developed. The NavyaLead fleet management system is being offered in the short term, but in the future, Navya plans to look more into API integration with customers’ own software. Anti-tank defence QinetiQ North America (QNA) and Pratt Miller Defense have partnered to develop and submit a contender for the US Army’s Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV) programme. This is aimed at fostering the development of (and acquiring) a range of UGVs of varying classes and duties. These will range up to 30 t in weight and carry an array of sensors for surveillance and reconnaissance operations, as well as various weaponry, with a particular emphasis on anti-tank warfare. QNA and Pratt Miller Defense’s submission will be a variant of the latter’s Expeditionary Modular Autonomous Vehicle (EMAV) tailored to the RCV programme’s (mostly classified) requirements. QNA’s modular and open- architecture hardware and software for UGV control will be integrated with the EMAV platform in order to achieve the desired RCV Light (RCV-L) capabilities. “There had already been quite a bit of development of the EMAV platform through trials with the Marine Corps prior to our involvement,” says Jonathan Hastie, director of unmanned systems products at QNA. “It was designed to be capable of tackling any number of different missions and threats by supporting a wide range of payloads. “So, the more modular we can make the design in terms of hardware, software, interfacing and so on, the more adaptable it will be to new defence requirements. That emphasis on modularity is what allowed Pratt Miller Defense and ourselves to partner up, since our control systems and their mobility platform have that same focus on component interoperability.” QinetiQ’s control systems are designed to make it simple to add or remove hardware and software according to new subsystems, payloads and other functionality, such as autonomous behaviours and sensing systems for the UGV to use and share with its operators. The RCV-L is a flat-deck vehicle, with a range of hard points and tie-downs for April/May 2020 | Unmanned Systems Technology QinetiQ and Pratt Miller Defense are submitting a version of the latter’s EMAV as a contender for the US Army’s RCV-L UGV requirement (Courtesy of QinetiQ)