Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Today, advanced Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) mobility systems can support rapid advancement over very difficult off-road terrain and is often limited only by the operating crew's ability to select the desired route and assure safe traverse through the preferred route. The LAV is a highly versatile military platform which has evolved to provide track-like off-road mobility while retaining the ability to travel on improved roads rapidly and safely without inflicting undue harm to the infrastructure. Unmanned Vehicles (UVs) acting as sensors in support of the LAV will provide terrain information much further ahead of the LAV than typical vehicle mounted equipment alone can. In land based military operations, the availability of timely and extended situational awareness is critical to the success and safety of various operations. Therefore, this research program will focus on developing enabling technology for our industry partner GDLS-C using extended UAV-based sensing for terrain mapping to support mission planning for ground vehicles; both LAV and unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV). In specific terms, this collaborative project has three main themes captures by the following research objectives: 1) Rapid incremental map building using sensors on-board LAV/UGV and UAV teams, 2) Path recommendation and autonomous path execution based on 3D terrain maps and 3) High fidelity multi-agent system modeling, control and co-ordination. The research results will provide a new capability that directly supports Canada's Adaptive Dispersed Operations (ADO) Concept.*