The Army's next truck should be smart, flexible, user-friendly, partially autonomous and affordable. In other words, the automotive equivalent of a gadget from Apple. At a trade conference in Virginia on Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Stephen Farmen, the chief of U.S. Army transportation, held up an iPhone. 'How do we put the kind of power and technology like this into a wheeled vehicle and hit the right price point?' Farmen asked, according to a report by National Defense.
The 'i-Tactical Wheeled Vehicle,' as Farmen called it, is still still years away. The Army just finished buying tens of thousands of medium transport trucks and mine-resistant battlefield transports. The branch's new Joint Tactical Light Vehicle, a Humvee replacement, is in the final stages of design. A truck with iPhone-like capabilities designed from the wheels up might have to wait for the next round of truck replacements in 15 years or so. It's possible by then that the Army won't want or need a truck with smartphone-like qualities. After all, the military does tend to get caught up in the tech trend of the moment. Virtual-reality helmets, anyone?
Still, the basic technology development for a smart truck is well under way. Sensors, robotic controls and smartphone interfaces are all being tested out separately. The big challenge will be integrating all these different techs.
The resulting iTruck, as National Defense dubs it, should be optionally manned. In other words, it should be able to go on missions with an Army sergeant behind the wheel, all on its own, or in convoys mixing drivers and robots. The technology for that capability has been in development since at least 2007. That's when a small company called Perceptek fitted several Marine-issue medium trucks with laser sensors, computer algorithms and a big red button, together called Convoy Active Safety Technology. With a press of the button, the truck's computer brain took over from its human driver. Similarly equipped trucks lined up behind the lead truck, droning along behind it like baby ducks following their mama.
Acquired by Lockheed Martin, the CAST trucks have steadily tackled harder and harder road conditions, culminating in the desert test last year. The Army has talked about deploying the robo-trucks to Afghanistan for further testing, but that country's relative lack of roads could squash the plan.
Human operators should be able to command their iTruck convoys using a smartphone, Farmen added. The Army has begun buying Android phones for the infantry. Meanwhile, the Navy (on behalf of the Marines) is developing Android-compatible controls for a robot cargo helicopter in development to replace the current K-MAX robo-copter.
Finally, the smart trucks should be able to beam video, mission data and even their own maintenance problems to other vehicles and to mechanics back in the motor pool. UPS proved that capability as far back as 1990, when it introduced the very first Delivery Information Acquisition Device, or DIAD ' the brown tablet computer that every delivery person carries. The current DIAD V not only records signatures, it plugs into the delivery truck where it gathers, and transmits, data about the truck and its surroundings.
At the very least, the Army's future truck should be as smart as today's highly computerized civilian cars, Farmen said. 'An Audi A8 can drive down the road and make 3,000 decisions in a mile of travel. How many decisions are the next generation of wheeled vehicles going to be able to make?' With the techs listed above, a lot. Assuming the Army can get them all to work together.
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