Oshkosh Defense, a division of Oshkosh Corporation, has integrated its TerraMax® Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) technology onto an Oshkosh MRAP All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV) to demonstrate capabilities for route-clearance missions.
TerraMax UGV technology has the potential to reduce troops’ exposure to threats, such as improvised explosive devices (IED) in route-clearance missions, as well as optimize the number of troops needed for such operations.
Oshkosh is attending the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) Unmanned Systems 2014 in Orlando, Florida (12-15 May) to demonstrate how TerraMax UGV technology can benefit route clearance and other missions.
“The clearance of threats like IEDs, mines and unexploded munitions pose challenges that global military forces have faced since World War II, and are expected to continue long after Afghanistan,” said John Urias, President of Oshkosh Defense.
“Our TerraMax UGV technology can bring autonomous capabilities to existing manned vehicle platforms, like the M-ATV, to remove troops from targeted routes and provide greater standoff distance from explosive threats. It also has force-multiplication benefits with one operator controlling several vehicles, so logistics operations can be successfully completed with fewer troops,” he added.
Equipped on the M-ATV, as well as other heavy and medium tactical wheeled vehicles, TerraMax UGV technology enables one or multiple vehicles in a route clearance convoy to operate autonomously, resulting in fewer troops exposed to threats.
The TerraMax UGV system can be enhanced to intelligently incorporate counter-IED (C-IED) payloads such as ground-penetrating radar and mine rollers. The TerraMax operator control unit (OCU) also can provide over-the-horizon situational awareness to accompanying manned vehicles. The system is highly interoperable, using a widely adopted, non-proprietary open architecture messaging standard that enables modularity and easy integration of new subsystems.
Oshkosh is conducting this work independently and in parallel to efforts within the U.S. Marine Corps and Army to identify opportunities for using UGVs for route-reconnaissance and route-clearance missions. The effort expands on Oshkosh’s efforts with the U.S. Office of Naval Research Cargo UGV project, which seeks to bring UGV capabilities to logistics convoy missions to help reduce troops’ exposure to threats.
