Key Highlight:
- ARL to use its own autonomy stack for the development of their vehicle program
- The complex world of autonomy gives new solutions to engineer.
- SARA program is a new and different way of doing business.
Autonomous Vehicle Program
In the latest report, the Army Research Lab is planning to use its own new “autonomy stack” to upgrade the development of the autonomous vehicle program of a one-year sprint.
Owning an autonomy tech stack supports applications and development of all the layers of technology, rather than depending on the contractor. Army Research Lab has got more control over its Scalable, Adaptive, and Resilient Autonomy (SARA) program to improvise robot drives themselves.
“This gave the lab more flexibility to assign research roles to partners about what groups do and how they use the tech stack to fuse their efforts,” told by researchers in a report.
Different Way of Doing Business
Last year the SARA program kicked off its one-year sprint while working with eight collaborators from across the country. The complex world of autonomy gives new solutions to engineers.
Eric Spero said in an interview, it is “A new and different way of doing business,” lead system engineer for autonomous robotic integration at ARL.
Research that delivered new capabilities range from obstacle classification to navigate narrow passageways, the tech stack in-house allowed ARL to give tasks to researchers and reduce redundancies.
AI Behind the Steering Wheel
The Army has decided to have autonomous ground vehicles to improvise the safety of soldiers in the battle for years. The SARA program is been working on getting AI behind the steering wheel of its vehicle.
The divide-and-conquer strategies among the eight collaborators were given specific cases and problems to solve. At the time of sharing new code, they can simply upload the software to ARL’s stack; this will let engineers to use it in concert with software from other teams.
The Autonomous stack is completely owned by ARL. It was developed in-house, and about 20% was owned by the government, this allows ARL more flexibility on how it works with research partners.
Folks Became Really Innovative
The strength of the SARA program is requiring the performers to work with the ARL software. This gave university and other private sector teams from across the country participated, many outside of the usual group the Army works with on autonomy problem.
“With [the] SARA program, it was a little different, because instead of just putting out a call … it was more of: ‘We would like to invite you into this new collaborative environment,’” Spero said in one of the interviews. He further added, “Folks became really innovative.”
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