Mission Critical: Security Edition

Mission CritiCal • Fall 2012 1

VOLUME2 NO.3 • FALL 2012 • AUVSI • 2700 Sou th Qu in cy S t ree t , Su i t e 400 , A r l i ng ton , VA 22206 , USA

Insidethisissue:

Robotsvs.piratesProtectingtheOlympicsHarborsecurity

UGVs pound the perimeter security beat

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4 Essential componentsNews from the security robotics sector

VOLUME2 NO.3 • FALL 2012

8 A bounty of botsBattling piracy on the high seas with robotics

14 Q&AArturo Cadena, director of the UUV program for Ecuador’s navy, talks coastal defense

On the cover: The Mobile Detection Assessment Response System (MDARS) prepares to embark on a security mission at the Nevada National Security Site. Three ro-bots now patrol the area, saving millions in expenses over fixed security systems. Photo courtesy Steve Scott, NNSS.

CONTENTS

22 State of the artA look at the robots ensuring safety across the globe

25 Pop culture corner‘Person of Interest’ weighs privacy against vigilance

The Ecuadorian navy tests the weapons payload on the ESGRUM 1 unmanned surface vessel. Photo courtesy Arturo Cadena.

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2 Mission CritiCal • Fall 2012

Mission Critical is published four times a year as an official publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. Contents of the articles are the sole opinions of the authors and do not necessarily express the policies or opinion of the publisher, editor, AUVSI or any entity of the U.S. government. Materials may not be reproduced without written permission. All advertising will be subject to publisher’s approval and advertisers will agree to indemnify and relieve publisher of loss or claims resulting from advertising contents. Annual subscription and back issue/reprint requests may be addressed to AUVSI.

The other London eyeRobotics companies and their technologies ensure safety at one of the world’s largest sporting events, the Olympic Games.

26 TimelineThe evolution of surveillance ground robots

38 Testing, testingRafael and Kongsberg Maritime focus on maritime surveillance

40 SpotlightRafael’s Protector, Kongsberg’s DDS 9000 provide maritime security

42 Technology gapExploring how big of a threat GPS spoofing may become

44 End usersThe Palm Beach County SWAT team’s transition to robots

Page 16

Page 29

BorderlinePerimeter security robots work to ensure safety in rugged, but dangerous environments.

Advertiser indexCreative Electronic Systems . . . . . . .21


EditorialVicePresidentofCommunications

andPublications,Editor Brett Davis

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ManagingEditorDanielle Lucey

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AssociateEditorStephanie [email protected]

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Security seems like a natural job for a robot.

In many ways, the job is sort of like warfare — long hours of bore-dom punctuated by moments of ter-ror. That’s not a good environment for people, but robots don’t mind the work.

In this issue, we take a look at the spectrum of unmanned systems en-gaged in security-related work, some of it military, some of it nonmilitary, across all domains.

First up is a look at how the world of high tech is addressing an ancient, relatively low-tech crime, that of piracy.

Associate Editor Stephanie Levy takes a look at some of the new tools being prepared for the fight, which include unmanned helicop-ters, surface vessels and sophisti-cated sensors.

Related to that, don’t miss the Q&A starting on Page 14, where Arturo Cadena, research director of Ecua-dor’s navy, talks about that country’s push to develop an unmanned sur-face vessel to combat piracy. If you missed his talk at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America 2012, this is a good chance to get caught up.

Managing Editor Danielle Lucey looks at the ways in which unmanned sys-tems, or related technology, can help

in securing large-scale events such as the upcoming Winter Olympics in Russia. Russian security forces plan to use homegrown unmanned systems from ZALA Aero, but secu-rity experts around the world are increasingly waking up to how un-manned systems can be a force mul-tiplier. This story is on Page 16.

Beginning on Page 29, I take a look at two hard-working ground systems that have already put in thousands of hours patrolling sensitive, but rug-ged, areas. One is the Mobile Detec-tion Assessment Response System (MDARS), which is monitoring the vast expanse of the Nevada National Security Site, and the other is Guardi-um, built by Israel’s G-NIUS, which is currently deployed on that country’s southern border (these two systems also star in our Timeline, beginning on Page 26). I also take a quick peek at an indoor system, a South Korean robot that helps patrol a prison with the goal of keeping the guards, and the inmates, safe.

Be sure to stay tuned for our next is-sue, coming in late December, when we take a deeper dive into the world of sensors. And we’ll have some news about some changes in store for Mission Critical magazine in 2013.

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Brett Davis

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Essential Components

Black-I, Rockwell Collins land DARPA security contract

DARPA has announced two awards for its High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems program, aimed at creating technology that helps create high-assurance cyber-physical security systems.

Black-I Robotics won a program con-tract, with delivery in October, for unmanned ground vehicles in sup-port of the Air Force Research Labo-ratory. The program aims at making unmanned vehicles and cars more secure from hackers.

“Black-I Robotics was selected by DARPA and the Air Force because it uses an open-architecture configu-ration specified for military systems on a user friendly and modifiable mid-sized robot,” says Brian Hart, president of the company.

security solution for UAS that could be applied to other network-enabled military vehicles.

“Making sure software is designed correctly from the beginning is para-mount to guarantee the security of military computing platforms,” says John Borghese, vice president of Rockwell Collins’ Advanced Technol-ogy Center.

As contract prime, Rockwell is leading a team from Boeing; Galois; NICTA, Australia’s information and commu-nications technology research center of excellence; and the University of Minnesota.

Anti-spoofing goes micro on Wasp AE

For the first time, a micro UAV will be outfitted with a secure and jam-resistant GPS, ensuring a tightly con-trolled connection that cannot be hacked.

AeroVironment has partnered with Rockwell Collins to use the company’s MicroGRAM GPS receiver on AeroVi-ronment’s digital datalink Wasp UAS. The digital link version of the aircraft was released in May, adding to Aero-Vironment’s transition of all its UAS away from analog communications.

“Having secure GPS significantly re-duces the possibility that the Wasp AE can be jammed or spoofed,” says Dave Schreck, director of UAS and Control Technologies for Rockwell Collins.

The 7-gram GPS receiver, released in early 2011, is 90 percent smaller than its predecessor product, according

The $528,000 award for the High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems program has Black-I building three LandShark Series H UGVs, which consist of one robot, an operator control unit, a military radio and sev-eral special payloads. These include a mobile turret, anticollision radar system, and high-end optical and thermal imaging cameras.

“Robots have emerging applications as border patrol scouts or base pe-rimeter guards, but losing control of the camera array to an enemy would be catastrophic,” says Hart, on the security of Black-I’s imaging system.

In September, Rockwell Collins was selected as the prime contractor for the unmanned air vehicle portion of the DARPA program. The company’s four-and-a-half-year award tasks Rockwell with developing a cyber-

A drawing of Black-I Robotics’ LandShark Series H UGV. Image courtesy Black-I Robotics.



to Rockwell Collins, allowing it to fly on the 1.3-kilogram Wasp AE. The re-ceiver is an addition to Rockwell Col-lins’ Selective Availability Anti-Spoof-ing Module technology line of GPS.

MicroGRAM can also be used on handheld radios, ruggedized field computers and laser range finders. The company released a follow-on product at AUVSI’s Unmanned Sys-tems North America 2012 that allows for real-time kinematic anti-spoofing GPS reception.

SAIC tackles anti-sub warfare

SAIC has been contracted by DARPA to continue its Anti-Submarine War-fare Continuous Trial Unmanned

Vessel (ACTUV) efforts, with an award for phases two through four of the program.

Focused on addressing the threat of adversarial diesel-electric sub-marines, phases two through four of the program will focus on the de-sign, construction and demonstra-tion of an unmanned surface vehicle capable of tracking enemy subs for months at a time. The ACTUV vehicle would have to swim for thousands of kilometers with minimal human interference.

“Key features and technology for the vessel include advanced software, robust autonomy for safe opera-tions in accordance with maritime laws and innovative sensors to con-

tinuously track the quietest of sub-marine targets,” says Scott Littlefield, DARPA program manager.

Phase one of the program focused on validating SAIC’s system concept and completing risk reduction test-ing. DARPA hopes to have an opera-tional prototype for testing by mid-2015.

“Our goal is to transition an opera-tional game changer to the Navy,” says Littlefield. “This should create an asymmetry to our advantage, negat-ing a challenging submarine threat at one-tenth their cost of building subs. The program also establishes foundational technologies for future unmanned naval systems.”

An artist’s conception of the ACTUV program. Image courtesy DARPA.


Essential Components — continued from Page 5

Saab pitches Skeldar for antipiracy tasks

Saab is pitching its Skeldar UAS as a potential antipiracy tool in South Africa. Flightglobal reports the com-pany is finishing development of the aircraft so it can be on the market by the end of the year.

Katharina Ronnberg, Saab’s business development director for tactical un-manned aircraft, told Flightglobal that the small tactical UAS can be readily deployed onboard ships and work with existing manned aircraft. Skeldar also has a 40-kilowatt engine that runs on diesel fuel, giving the aircraft endurance of up to six hours and a range of about 100 kilometers.

In addition to South Africa, Saab is looking for customers for Skeldar in Sweden and the U.S. Armed Forces.

DHS seeks security, stealth with UUV resembling a tuna

The Department of Homeland Se-curity Science and Technology Di-rectorate is funding an unmanned underwater vehicle program that will create a vessel, the BIOSwim-mer, that looks like a tuna. Accord-ing to a DHS release, a tuna’s natural body framework is optimal for UUVs, “solving some of the propulsion and maneuverability problems that plague conventional UUVs.”

Boston Engineering Corp.’s Ad-

vanced Systems Group, of Waltham, Mass., will create the BIOSwimmer and make it able to swim in harsh environments. The fish may per-form tasks such as inspecting the interiors of flooded ships, harbors and piers and carrying out security missions.

“It’s designed to support a variety of tactical missions, and with its inter-changeable sensor payloads and re-configurable operator controls, can be optimized on a per-mission ba-sis,” says Mike Rufo, director of ASG at Boston Engineering. The company has displayed earlier versions of the BIOSwimmer at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America events.

Saab’s Skeldar on display at DSEi 2011. AUVSI photo.


General Robotics’ Ferret mobile camera inspects under a vehicle. Photo courtesy General Robotics.


The fish-like vessel is battery pow-ered and will use an onboard com-puter suite for navigation, sensor processing and communications. Unlike a lot of vessels, its internal components and external sensing are designed for constricted spaces and very viscous fluids.

“It’s all about distilling the science,” says David Taylor, program manag-er for the BIOSwimmer in DHS S&T’s Borders and Maritime Security divi-sion. “It’s called biomimetics. We’re using nature as a basis for design and engineering a system that works exceedingly well. Tuna have had mil-lions of years to develop their ability to move in the water with astound-

ing efficiency. Hopefully we won’t take that long.”

Robots secure suspicious vehicles at RNC

The Republican National Contention in Tampa, Fla., aside from being a major meeting for the GOP also saw a gathering of robotic solutions to aid in security efforts.

General Robotics deployed its Ferret robotic camera through the Tampa Bay Regional Explosive Ordnance Disposal team. A subsidiary of Pan-oscan Inc., General Robotics’ system is a mere 4 inches tall, meaning it can drive under cars to inspect for anything suspicious.

According to Panoscan partner Casey Coss in a company press re-lease, prior to the Ferret, these types of searches for bombs and explo-sives under vehicles were done with a mirror on a stick or by driving ve-hicles over a digital scanning ramp, which provides a flat image of an object.

At the RNC, the Ferret was used to scanned under buses that trans-ported delegates to the convention that police dogs had identified as suspicious.

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show that they’re increasingly un-common. A report by NATO’s Inter-national Marine Bureau finds that international piracy decreased by 54 percent during the first half of 2012. Overall, 177 incidents were reported to the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre in the first six months of 2012, com-pared to 266 incidents for the same period in 2011.

ByStEPHANIELEVy

t had been more than three years since Paul and Rachel

Chandler took to the seas in their small yacht. That’s because in Octo-ber 2009, Somali pirates took them hostage and held them captive in the country for 388 days. According to reports, after friends and family were unsuccessful in collecting the $7 million ransom the pirates de-manded for their release, a British-

Somali businessman was able to col-lect the funds and negotiate for their safe return to the United Kingdom.

And now they’re out to sea again. In September, the couple told NBC News they were planning a six-month voyage on their same yacht, starting that month.

While stories like those of the Chan-dlers are horrifying, the numbers

Pirates, beware:

AUtONOMOUSVEHICLESAMPUPANtIPIRACy,MARItIMESECURItyMISSIONS

CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/05/13657409-couple-held-hostage-by-pirates-for-388-days-to-set-sail-on-new-journey?lite

http://www.sea-technology.com/e-news/0912/enews09121.html#item4

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/05/13657409-couple-held-hostage-by-pirates-for-388-days-to-set-sail-on-new-journey?lite

http://www.sea-technology.com/e-news/0912/enews09121.html#item4


DragonSpy’s range out on the water “to find out what kind of range we can get in a water environment with different frequencies.” Reserved fre-quencies for things like cell phone use vary from country to country, and Kennedy says this testing is es-pecially important as Neany looks to sell DragonSpy to clients in South America and Europe.

Kennedy says that Neany has had clients interested in DragonSpy for antipiracy missions since AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North Amer-ica 2012, but he would not com-ment further. He did add that the U.S. Navy has expressed interest in Dragon Spy for the Joint Advanced Weapons Sensor System (JAWSS).

Unmanned mutiny

The Ecuadorian navy has been try-ing to develop its own autonomous underwater vehicle to combat pi-racy and antisubmarine warfare for the past two years. Research Direc-tor Arturo Cadena says researchers have been working off the hypoth-esis that pirates have been attach-ing their own underwater vehicles carrying illicit cargo to Ecuadorian ships, but by the time a manned vessel can investigate, the pirates’ vehicle has detached and navigated away.

“We want to use another autono-mous underwater vehicle to detect the pirates,” Cadena says. With the help of an unmanned system, Cade-na estimates the navy would be able to respond to pirate threats in less than an hour.

The Ecuadorian navy’s AUV proto-type can be deployed from a coast guard vessel and operate for up

But NATO officials are still urging in-ternational diligence in combating piracy. While NATO Deputy Chief of Staff for Northwood, England, Com-modore Bruce Belliveau pointed out in a NATO news release that “at-tacks have been minimal during the monsoon season.” He noted that an improvement in weather typically leads to an increase in piracy.

“We have seen a steady downward trend in pirate successes, which is due in part to the vigilance of naval forces. We call upon merchant ves-sels to do what they can to ensure they continue to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to board and take control of their ships,” he add-ed.

Increasingly, unmanned systems are becoming a larger plank of the solu-tion. Companies and countries are developing subsea, surface and air systems to track pirate activity and, hopefully, stop attacks before they happen. Weaponization of these platforms is also becoming increas-ingly common.

A pirate’s life for Neany

Neany Inc. debuted its first un-manned surface vehicle prototype, DragonSpy, at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America 2012 in August. According to the company, the USV comes equipped with ARES 7.62-millimeter externally powered gun, an ultralight weapons mount and i2Tech’s i200L camera. But the company says the end user can in-tegrate different types of sensors, cameras or weapons on the boat.

“This show has generated more in-terest in our products — not just DragonSpy, but the UAS — than any

other show we’ve gone to in the al-most seven years I’ve been here,” says Neany’s Brian Kennedy.

DragonSpy can also survey water-ways in real time, something pro-gram director Matt Young says can benefit antipiracy missions, as well as border patrol, nuclear plants, military operations and homeland security.

“[For instance,] the Texas border, a lot of it is waterway, so having an unmanned vehicle that can travel up and down the waterway, that can be a customer,” Young adds.

In early September, DragonSpy took to the water in Ohio for live fire testing. High-speed cameras, accel-erometers and other sensors col-lected data from firing the ARES gun at different angles, with the goal of assessing the impact of the weapon firing on the USV. Remote opera-tors fired the weapons payload on DragonSpy during the tests. At press time, Neany was still collecting data from the test and preparing data analysis. The company is also plan-ning additional testing of the USV in October.

“We don’t want to bite off too much,” Kennedy says. “We want to do this in more of a quick spiral method, where we can test some things, make some [modifications], go back, do some additional testing and find out empirically what our static anal-ysis is.” Additional testing of Drag-onSpy could take up to a year, espe-cially because of the concerns about having a weapons payload on an au-tonomous system.

In terms of testing that autonomy, Kennedy says the next step is to test

ByStEPHANIELEVy


Antipiracy — continued from Page 9

“We’ve used ultrasonic transceivers for underwater communication, but in some areas the system doesn’t work well,” he admits. “The AUV can listen to the message, but the mes-sage doesn’t arrive to the control station at the sea surface. Until now, the AUV didn’t obtain success de-tecting another UUV.”

At an educational session at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America 2012, Cadena also presented the Ecuadorian navy’s work on its own antipiracy unmanned surface ves-

Now that the AUV is operational for sea testing, Cadena says the next step is about three years of testing, mainly to solve any software prob-lems. One of the other problems to overcome is the lack of commu-nication via GPS available in an un-derwater environment. This issue is exacerbated in Ecuador’s Gulf of Guayaquil because of the density of the water and the presence of thermoclines, or layers of the water where temperature changes rapidly, in the shallow waters.

to 10 hours at a time. Its payload includes GPS, an inertial measure-ment unit and avoidance sensors for autonomous navigation. The system also boasts passive and ac-tive acoustic and electromagnetic sensors.

“The AUV uses specialized parts for undersea vehicles,” Cadena told Mission Critical in an email. “The AUV design requires sophisticated com-ponents like the underwater thrust-ers and pressure housings for the electronics.”

Ecuador’s navy ran tests of its USV in Salinas, Eduador. Photo courtesy Arturo Cadena.


sel. Using exclusively commercial off-the-shelf materials, including a nonlethal gun installed to protect the vessel, researchers developed and tested a USV that can autono-mously navigate shallow waters and perform surveillance and reconnais-sance missions.

“Under ideal conditions, the USV can detect installations occulted by high-density vegetation,” Cadena said in the presentation. “Basically, you can’t see the robot, but the robot can see you.”

Cadena tells Mission Critical that the two unmanned systems can also work together to combat coastal threats. When an enemy UUV is suspected to be operating off the coast, the navy’s USV can hunt for the system on the surface, while the AUV patrols the water column and near the seafloor. Specifically, the

USV deploys a hydrophone array, and then the AUV navigates under the thermocline to detect any sound trace. Both systems can be deployed from the same manned vessel.

“Typically, the illegal UUV uses a commercial transponder in order to meet the mothership,” Cadena ex-plains. “The USV with the onboard, passive electronic warfare equip-ment is a potential solution to de-tect this signal in order to capture the UUV.”

[Read a Q&A with Arturo Cadena on Page 14.]

Sensors get sea legs

A wide array of new sensors, par-ticularly for unmanned air systems, can provide eyes in the sky for en-emy boat detection. In June, Raythe-on carried out tests on its Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevat-ed Netted Sensor System, or JLENS. During testing, JLENS was tasked with detecting and tracking multiple speedboats on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The boats swarmed and exe-cuted tactical maneuvers at various speeds, mimicking the behavior of enemy ships run by hostile navies.

Testing showed that the system could detect and track swarming boats from hundreds of miles away. Also, the company said that the sys-tem could provide around-the-clock coverage of a hostile environment for 30 days.

JLENS is an elevated, persistent over-the-horizon sensor system. The entire system, called an orbit, consists of the sensor package, two tethered aerostats connected to mobile mooring stations, and com-munications and processing groups. It uses an integrated radar system to detect, track and target a vari-ety of threats. This capability bet-ter enables commanders to defend against hostile cruise missiles, as well as moving surface vehicles such

sCan it or Click it:Click or scan this barcode with your smartphone to see

a video showcasing Raytheon’s JLENS system.

The Ecuadorian navy tests the weapons payload on the ESGRUM 1 unmanned surface vessel. Photo courtesy Arturo Cadena.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni3MKJNSLOk


as boats, Scud launchers, automo-biles, trucks and tanks. The JLENS system even offers enhanced pro-tection from an enemy’s unmanned aircraft. Finally, it provides ascent phase detection of tactical ballistic missiles and large caliber rockets.

In April, the Office of Naval Research began airborne testing of its Multi-Mode Sensor Seeker, which will help distinguish small pirate ships from other vessels. MMSS combines high-definition cameras, midwave infrared sensors and ladar technol-ogy. Target recognition algorithms will exploit the 3-D data collected by that ladar to compare 3-D images of the vessel to templates or schemat-ics stored in the system’s memory.

“The 3-D data gives you a leg up on target identification,” said Dean Cook, principal investigator for the MMSS program at Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAW-CWD), in a press release. “Infrared and visible cameras produce 2-D pic-tures, and objects in them can be dif-ficult to automatically identify. With ladar data, each pixel corresponds to a 3-D point in space, so the auto-matic target recognition algorithm can calculate the dimensions of an object and compare them to those in a database.”

The MMSS will fly on Northrop Grumman’s MQ-8 Fire Scout robotic helicopter. ONR officials say this will reduce the workload of sailors oper-ating the UAS from control stations aboard Navy ships.

According to ONR, in previous shore-based testing, the target-recognition algorithms worked successfully against vessels at sea. The software was also installed on a BRITE Star II turret by a team from Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, Raytheon, FLIR Systems, BAE Sys-tems and Utah State University; that airborne testing took place aboard a manned test helicopter. The flight assessment was conducted against groups of approximately seven

small boats in a military sea range off the California coast in summer 2012.

And what if you want ONR to de-liver antipiracy technology to your maritime system? There’s an app for that, too. In May, ONR began de-veloping Web applications to help multinational navies combat piracy. Working with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific and scientists in Chile, ONR will build open-source maritime widgets. Ulti-mately, the software will be compat-ible with multiple maritime network systems, allowing navies to use the tools to share information on global operations.

Australia’s Sentient is also offering sensor options for antipiracy UAS missions. Unveiled at AUVSI’s Un-manned Systems North America 2010 in Denver, Sentient’s Kestrel Maritime is a software system that automatically detects targets in elec-tro-optical and infrared aerial full-motion video from UAS. The plug-and-play software has been used on unmanned systems conducting surveillance missions over land and water.

Stephanie Levy is associate editor of Mission Critical.

Antipiracy — continued from Page 11

For More information:http://www.shipping.nato.int/Pages/default.aspx

www.neanyinc.com

www.onr.navy.mil

The U.S. Navy’s Multi-Mode Sensor Seeker “sketches” and recognizes the image of an enemy boat. Photo courtesy Office of Naval Research.

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the recuperation point by itself. Basi-cally, the controller decides the pa-trol zones and the mission time. Dur-ing the mission, the controller can change the mission parameters and abort a mission if necessary. For ex-ample, if a pirate vessel is detected, the controller can define a new pa-trol area in order to detect and track this vessel continuously to give time to the coast guard interceptor. If the USV carries the weapon system, the USV only operates it in remote mode under the controller responsibility.

Q: How is the USV program funded? How long will

it take to get these USVs from testing to implementation?

A: The program is funded by the navy of Ecuador to study the feasibil-ity to use unmanned vehicles for sur-veillance and reconnaissance tasks in the Gulf of Guayaquil. After the feasibility studies, the implementa-tion of an operational robot squad-ron will take at least four years.

Arturo CadenaQ & a

solution to maintain a permanent presence in these islands is the use of unmanned vehicles. We’re devel-oping an unmanned surface vehicle, autonomous underwater vehicles, an amphibious unmanned ground vehicle, and a ducted fan unmanned aerial vehicle with surveillance and reconnaissance. In order to get good operational results against piracy, we estimate that is necessary to have a large number of deployed USVs, more than 100. This is the main chal-lenge of the project.

Q: What operations can the USV do completely

autonomously? At what point does the controller have to get involved?

The USV can do surveillance and reconnaissance tasks fully autono-mously. The USV can detect, identify and track any vessel with its comput-er vision system and send the imag-es to the central command without human control; it can even return to

Q: Why are unmanned sur-face vessels uniquely

helpful in fighting piracy off the coast of Ecuador?

A: The problem with locating the pi-rates is that they depart from unin-habited islands of the Gulf of Guaya-quil. These islands can be used by the pirates as an operation base and are the ideal site for clandestine shipyards. Recently, in one of these islands, the Ecuadorian coast guard found a clandestine shipyard.

We need to maintain a permanent presence in these islands in order to detect the presence of human activities and survey the maritime traffic near the islands. It’s very dif-ficult do that with the coast guard vessels, due the zone extension and the disadvantage that the pirates have informants at the harbors to report as the coast guard vessels depart. They simply hide until the coast guard ends his or her patrol in a determined area. A potential

Arturo Cadena is the director of the Unmanned Vehicle Program for the Sailor Forma-tion School of the Navy of Ecuador. The Ecuadorian navy is developing an unmanned sur-face vehicle to combat piracy, particularly in the Gulf of Guayaquil. Cadena presented his

team’s work on unmanned systems at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America 2012.

The Ecuadorian navy built the USV using exclusively commercial off-the-shelf parts. The USV comes equipped with two development boards to support the sensor payloads for autonomy and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, respectively. Researchers also installed a nonlethal weapons system, called ECHO 1, on the USV.

sCan it or Click it:Click or scan with your smartphone to see the nonlethal

weapons on the Ecuadorian navy’s USV in action.

http://youtu.be/-nflGpuDbqA


Q: What are some of the most important les-

sons you’ve learned from the testing process?A: The most important lessons come from our experience using the UAVs IAI Heron and Searcher. We needed a permanent presence in strategic areas with low cost, and these UAVs fly less than 20 hours with high main-tenance cost. During the USV testing process we found that the probabil-ity of success to localize clandestine installations depends of the weath-er conditions in the patrol area. An important lesson learned is how to debug the software against logical errors during the sea trials; it’s very difficult to find these types of errors in the code.

Q: How do you make sure that a robot built using

commercial parts is both eco-nomical and robust enough for military use?

A: The reliability of the architecture based on low-cost robotics parts is being verified by the field tests. Extended Kalman filter techniques and artificial intelligence algorithms compensate for some of the impre-cision of the components. In order to control piracy activities in the Gulf of Guayaquil, we need geo-referenced imagery — USV cameras — from strategic points; even low-resolution images can be useful. The commer-cial parts satisfy our requirements, but due the operating conditions — salty environment and high hu-midity — the USV’s electronics com-partments give the necessary condi-tions for correct operation of these parts. For example, the GSM [global system for mobile] communication module is contained in sealed hous-ing to avoid the contact with salty air that can produce corrosion in this

delicate component. Some compo-nents of the USV were tested in ex-treme environments like Antarctica. This research project is based on the experience gained during the development of autonomous under-water vehicles for Antarctic explora-tion that implicates a high degree of automation and takes decisions without human intervention. The same components of the AUV are used in this research project. Some parts of the robot are cheaper but robust enough for industrial and military application, like the FPGA [field-programmable gate array] development board used in the ro-bot. Due the good results using this technology, we’re developing more advanced applications using FPGA; the same FPGA board is used for the development of low-cost inertial guidance system for a sea-skimming missile. The sea trials demonstrated the [reliability] of the guidance, navi-gation and control system using low-cost GPS and inertial sensors, but the surveillance and reconnaissance sensors require more testing to be sure if this system is robust under real work conditions.

Q: Your USV was built with low-cost, commercial

components. What’s the risk that the very pirates you’re com-bating will be able to acquire these materials and manipulate them? How do you account for that risk?

A: We assumed that the pirates would have knowledge about the capacities of the USV onboard sen-sors due the low cost and easy ac-cess. This information is not useful if you don’t know the exact USV posi-tion. The main strength of the USV is not the sensors on board — it’s the discretion and low visibility. She

can easily hide in high-density veg-etation areas for surveillance of the maritime traffic in strategic islands of the Gulf of Guayaquil. Clandestine installations in the middle of inhab-ited islands require a supply line, so the USV discretely can help to detect the supply ships with her sensors system.

Q: What are some of the potential security is-

sues for the USVs in open water that you can’t necessarily test to in aquatic or sea trials?

A: The main security problem for the platforms is vandalism; some people look the unmanned vehicle as an op-portunity to [steal] her parts. We’re working on options to protect the robot, especially the onboard infor-mation. This is the reason that we prefer to carry out the operations discretely during the night.

Q: What measures are in place to make sure the

weapons payload on board the USV is used responsibly?

A: The purpose of the weapons sys-tem is for future support of the op-eration. The weapon has nonlethal ammunition. The only purpose of the weapons is to support opera-tions. But for now, the weapon isn’t completely safe. It requires more de-velopment, at least one year.

Q: How can other coun-tries look to start their

own antipiracy program with USVs?

A: The first step to start an antipiracy program is to study the geographical situation and the current state of the operation forces to generate the re-quirements for unmanned vehicles — range, payload, endurance and survivability.

S


Gold metal

eventeen days, 11,000 of the world’s top athletes, nine mil-

lion ticketholders and about 500 acres to cover — the Olympics is the epitome of pop-up high-security events. While many technologies are used to help security forces monitor the Olympics, the games have borrowed some from the un-manned systems world.

ByDANIELLELUCEy

Despite a lot of press surrounding the possible use of UAS over the London Olympics, the U.K.’s Civil Aviation Authority has no record of any systems flying over the July and August event. However, there are concrete plans in motion to use UAS over the 2014 Sochi Winter Olym-pics in Russia. And while the 2012 Summer Olympics didn’t employ

any unmanned eyes in the sky, the games borrowed a technology from the modeling and simulation indus-try to secure the streets of London.

Soaring over Sochi

Superintendent Richard Watson of the National Police Air Service told The Telegraph, “I think we missed an opportunity with the Olympics. But

Unmanned SyStemS technology ProvideS olymPic SecUrity

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9496230/Police-drones-could-be-used-to-monitor-public-from-sky.html


there is an opportunity to do things differently. Until we start to ask the questions, we will always think the same way.

“I see unmanned systems as part of the future,” he continued. “There is an aircraft over London all the time — every day, giving images back. Why does it need to be a very expen-sive helicopter?”

However, he said the systems haven’t yet proven to be cost ef-fective, illustrated by an expensive $13,000 loss of a system by police into the river Mersey in October 2011.

Though the U.K. may have soured to the idea of using UAS over the Olym-pics, Russia is ready to employ un-manned systems over the 2014 So-chi winter games, using homegrown ZALA Aero’s aircraft.

“[The] Olympics for Russia is a big opportunity to host an incredible event, and with such events there are always issues with security,” said

Zala’s Nik Zakharov, who spoke to Mission Critical via email. “Especially [since] the event is the south of the country, where security is high on the agenda.”

The Olympics aren’t the first high-profile event to use ZALA Aero’s line of UAS. Zakharov says the company’s systems were used to monitor the 32nd G8 summit in St. Petersburg in the summer of 2006 — the first time the country’s Interior Ministry used unmanned systems, according to an article in Open Democracy Russia.

ZALA flew a small UAS flew over the summit, one weighing 5 kilograms and capable of 90-minute sorties. For the Sochi games, security and emergency response, through a number of government agencies, will use the ZALA 421-08 and ZALA 421-16. Both models have a wing-based fuselage with downward fac-ing wingtips and a front propeller. A gimbaled, infrared photo and video sensor is embedded on the wing

of the 421-16, and the body can house two other payloads, up to 3 kilograms. The system is designed for seven hours of use with a 50-ki-lometer range, but has a record of stretching a sortie out to 12 hours and 21 minutes. The much smaller 421-08, which weighs 2.3 kilograms, can fly for 90 minutes and is de-signed for plug-and-play payloads up to a quarter of a kilogram.

“[The systems are] simple in use, very popular and usually used for surveillance missions, forest fire re-sponse and emergency situations, such as flooding,” says Zakharov.

Like many other countries, legisla-tion is currently on its way for un-adulterated UAS use, says Zakharov, but they currently enjoy widespread use.

“UAVs are now trusted to do simi-lar jobs … to manned aviation, be it crop monitoring, energy sector pro-tection, to surveillance missions.”

ZALA’s ZANET network allows differ-

ZALA Aero’s 421-16 UAV, which the company has contracted to fly over the Sochi winter games in 2014. Photo courtesy ZALA Aero.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/andrei-soldatov-irina-borogan/big-brother-little-drones-�-protestors-beware

http://zala.aero/en/

http://zala.aero/en/news/1307706137.htm


ent users to operate under one sys-tem with real-time information flow, says Zakharov.

“The system incorporates ground-based surveillance units, such as CCTV, in effect sharing the informa-tion with up to 12,000 personnel in the air and on the ground at any given time,” he says.

Though the feed is available to so many, both UAS that the Sochi

Olympics will use only require one pilot, one payload operator and one analyst to operate. “[A] simple ver-sion of the software allows playback with coordinates and saved targets that you may have missed straight away,” Zakharov explains. The user can save up to two minutes’ worth of clips so they can create a report file that can be sent to another decision maker. It currently allows up to 10 different identified targets at a time,

and the software can suggest tar-gets autonomously, says Zahkarov.

This is London

Although the London games lacked unmanned planes flying overhead, providing security, the event still used technology out of the un-manned systems realm to keep vigi-lant.

AEgis Technologies was contracted

Security — continued from Page 17

A 3-D map of the 90,000-capacity Wembley stadium, the host location of the football finals for the London Olympics. AEgis Technologies creates these maps by melding 2-D maps with 3-D information from sources like satellites and aerial photography. Image courtesy AEgis Technologies.

http://www.aegistg.com/


by an unspecified group to provide 3-D maps of London, after perform-ing the same feat for the Beijing summer games in 2008. The com-pany has provided modeling and simulation for 24 years, but got into 3-D mapping in the last six to seven years, according to Lisa Caine, man-ager of the company’s geospatial programs. The project is a high-pro-file one for a small company from Huntsville, Ala.

“We have folks in house, software developers and our 3-D content de-velopers, that really, just based on existing relationships and previous products and services that we of-fered, started getting into that realm based on customer requirements,” she says.

The company has gathered inter-est through the years from attend-ing tradeshows and showing off its

software, says Caine. “From there [we] were able to develop the right relationships to get these Olympic projects, which are so wonderful and visible, which we can’t always do with some of the more military stuff.”

Making the 3-D maps of the Olym-pics was a two-year process for AEgis, with certain areas taking up more time than others.

A 3-D visualization of London, provided by AEgis Technologies for the 2012 Olympics’ security. Image courtesy AEgis Technologies.


“The 3-D models themselves vary in length,” she says. “We actually deliv-ered several sets of areas, and so a few large ones took several months, a few smaller ones took a matter of weeks. And so again it’s just the size and the areas, which I really can’t disclose, but there were vary-ing levels over the course of that two years.”

The basis of AEgis’ maps comes from elevation models, which provide a basic landscape. From there, a map comes to life by putting landscape

over an elevation, with data from a satellite or aerial photography. Caine can’t specify which method was used for London.

“You can do very high-detailed, high-resolution modeling of something. You’ve got professional content de-velopers that do that and graphic artists that do that. … Depending on the source of data and application of product at the end, all of this de-termines how long it takes and the features that it brings out,” she says.

Once the maps are made, they are typically used to help create situ-ational awareness and allow for op-erational planning, says Caine.

“What we have found is that the 3-D visualization, the 3-D map, is useful along with 2-D maps,” she says. “And within our tool, we have a correlated 2-D map for the 3-D environment.”

While a 2-D map is essential, a 3-D map allows a user to tell if they are going up or down, running into a hill or how tall a building is.

Security — continued from Page 19

A 3-D visualization of Buckingham Palace, outside the Olympic park, but a high-security target at all times. Image courtesy AEgis Technologies.


“So the 3-D gives much more spatial orientation information than a 2-D map can give, where a 2-D is very directional and has a lot of informa-tion as well,” Caine says. “But we’re visual people. We’re spatially orient-ed people, and the 3-D map corre-lated to the 2-D map really enhances the preparedness for going into an environment.”

The company has used this type of modeling and simulation technol-ogy before with AeroVironment’s product line, including Raven, Wasp and Puma and AAI Corp.’s One Sys-tem Remote Video Terminal. But AEgis’ maps have also been used for things like planning economic devel-opment in Alabama after the 2010 Gulf oil spill.

To employ the maps, users can ei-ther watch AEgis’ proprietary view-er for visualization or they can use their own software — a demand the company saw more of for the Lon-don Olympics.

“If they had their own software that they’re using for something, they could take our 3-D content — say we built the model of Big Ben and they wanted to put Big Ben into their software, they’d be able to do that, as well as see Big Ben in our soft-ware in our database if they didn’t have their own.”

Though Caine couldn’t be specific, she said AEgis did make some cus-tomer-driven changes between the Beijing and London games.

“We’ve got some very, very bright folks, and again with 20 years of modeling and simulation, that’s not a huge community,” she says. “So I think AEgis has done a phenom-enal job building their relationship in providing solutions, understand-ing the market, understanding the tools, understanding the needs of the end customer and, through that, continuing to go back and ask, ‘How can we apply that here?’ and ‘How would this work there?’ — continu-ing to grow and be solution focused and customer focused in really ev-erything we do.”

Danielle Lucey is managing editor of Mission Critical. Yvonne Headington contributed information to this article.

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Guarding the globestatE oF tHE art

Halton, Ontario, Canada

Using an Aeryon Scout UAS the force has owned since 2009, this September Halton police found $744,000 worth of marijuana plants growing illegally in a field in Ontario. Police have previously used the system to monitor crime scenes, perform search and rescue missions and investigate crash sites.

Rio de Janeiro

Brazil’s police forces bought $350 million worth of UAS from Israel Aerospace Industries in 2009 for increased security. The move also will help the South American nation increase its measures during the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. The deal was the largest ever between Israel and Brazil.

Gulf of Guayaquil

The Ecuadorian navy conducted tests on its ESGRUM unmanned surface vessel in 2012. The vessel, made with commercial off-the-shelf components, can lurk in concealed brush and detect pirate activity off the coast of Ecuador. See Q&A on Page 14.

Nevada

Three Mobile Detection Assessment Response System (MDARS) robots, built by General Dynamics Robotic Systems, patrol areas of the Nevada National Security Site, a testing ground for government agencies and a repository of nuclear waste. They work evenings, weekends and holidays. Using the robots is much cheaper than deploying fixed cameras or using round-the-clock human guards. See story on Page 29.

Israel

Unmanned ground vehicles from the Guardium family, built by G-NIUS, have been on patrol around Israel’s borders since 2008, and are concentrated now on the southern border with Egypt. G-NIUS is a joint venture of Israel Aerospace Industries and Elbit Systems. See story on Page 29.

Waltham, Mass.

Boston Engineering Corp.’s BIOSwimmer robotic fish may be coming to a body of water near you, as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has tapped the company to produce the fish for oil tanker and harbor inspections. The BIOSwimmer, which has been displayed in prototype form at AUVSI’s Un-manned Systems North America in the past, is based on the flexible shape of the tuna.

Grand Forks, N.D., Fort Huachuca, Ariz., Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Corpus Christi, Texas

These four bases serve as the homes of the Department of Homeland Security’s Reaper squadron. Used to monitor the United States northern and southern borders and the waters around the Gulf of Mexico, DHS has been using the systems since 2006.


Security concerns and needs are different across the globe, but police departments, federal agencies and mili-taries everywhere are increasingly opting to respond using robots. With air systems much cheaper than their manned counterparts and ground robots’ ability to keep people out of dangerous point-man positions, un-

manned systems are adding more distance than ever to the long arm of the law.

Gulf of Aden

Northrop Grumman’s Fire Scout was deployed off the USS Halyburton in the Gulf of Aden in the summer of 2011, perform-ing numerous counter-piracy mis-sions in its seven months at sea. The Gulf of Aden is known has “Pirate Alley,” with 237 pirate attacks occurring of the Somali coast in 2011, according to the World Shipping Council.

Tripoli, Libya

Libyan rebels used an Aeryon Scout Micro UAS to gather intelligence and coordinate re-sistance efforts in August 2011 during the country’s civil war. The use of UAS in Libya was unique to other police and security efforts around the globe, as the National Transitional Council used them as a tool to help overthrow the existing government regime. Aeryon Labs provided the UAS to rebels in cooperation with the Zariba Security Corp. and the council by sailing the systems from Malta to the overthrown city of Misrata. Zariba then conducted training on the systems in country before using their day- and nighttime cameras to aid surveillance on a march to Tripoli.

Pohang, South Korea

In April of 2012, South Korea began testing robotic prison guards to monitor inmates and inform human guards about changes in behavior or any other inconsistencies. The 5-foot-tall robots have 3-D cameras, a speaker and a microphone for communica-tions and are controlled from an iPad.

New Delhi, India

In April, The Times of India reported that the country’s Central Reserve Police Force started using UAS to monitor India’s Naxal operations, a left-wing political movement whose members are also commonly referred to as Maoists. After testing the systems for two years, the CRPF used the systems for real-time imagery and monitoring ground communications relays in the Chhattisgarh forest in Central India.

Offshore Iran

The USS Ponce, a 41-year-old ship, has undergone an unmanned makeover to make it more robust in combating threats off the coast of Iran. The ship now carries two: a Kingfish UUV and Boeing ScanEagle UAS. The Kingfish can reach depths of more than 900 feet and carry out missions for more than eight hours. The U.S. Navy told Bloomberg in September that the vessel had seen everything from cars to microwaves on the seafloor.

Fukuoka, Japan

Security firm Alacom has teamed with robot maker Tmsuk to create the T-34, a small-wheeled security robot that can be controlled by a cell phone and dispense a net to slow down intruders. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry supported the work. The T-34 is intended to guard buildings and warehouses.

Offshore Somalia

On 8 April 2009, 240 miles off-shore Somalia, pirates attacked the MV Maersk Alabama and kidnapped the ship’s captain, Richard Phillips. Navy SEALs used information from Insitu’s ScanEagle to gather imagery of the lifeboat holding Phillips, who was successfully freed on 12 April.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HCIYGdlH9Y0

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-04-06/india/31300675_1_spy-drones-anti-naxal-uavs

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comes to mind — but the idea is per-meating into the real world, too.

Government Technology reports that East Orange, N.J., has set up the Real Time Crime Prevention Center, which uses a smattering of technol-ogy — including shot location detec-tors, smart cameras and data mining software — to try to get police on the scene soon after a crime happens, if not before.

Earlier this year, New York City May-or Michael Bloomberg announced a partnership with the city’s police department and Microsoft to bring crime fighting and crime prevention technologies to law enforcement agencies worldwide, using advanced computers, cameras and license plate readers.

“This new system capitalizes on new, powerful policing software that al-lows police officers and other per-sonnel to more quickly access rel-evant information gathered from existing cameras, 911 calls, previous crime reports, and other existing tools and technology,” Bloomberg said in a Microsoft press release. “It will help the NYPD do more to pre-vent crimes from occurring and help them respond to crimes even more effectively.”

So, before too long, you may not have to go to the movie theater or your nearest television to see Jona-than Nolan’s idea of a high-tech, pre-emptive security operation in action; it may be happening right where you live.

Person of interest: When information means security PoP CUltUrE CornEr

security purposes. Cameras set up across the city track people’s faces, and Reese routinely monitors cell phone calls by “cloning” the phone of the person he’s trying to help.

“Using state-of-the-art surveillance technology, the two work outside of the law, using Reese’s adept skills and Finch’s unlimited wealth to un-ravel the mystery of the ‘person of interest’ and stop the crime before it happens,” the show’s website says.

From Gotham City to any city

If the basic plotline sounds a little bit familiar, it’s because it’s similar to scenes in the blockbuster “Dark Knight Rises,” where Batman taps into every cell phone in Gotham City to track the Joker.

As it turns out, both the film and the TV show have the same creative force behind them: Jonathan Nolan, brother to Batman director Chris-topher Nolan. He wrote “The Dark Knight” screenplay and developed the show “Person of Interest.”

The issue of stopping crime before it starts predates even that movie — Tom Cruise’s “Minority Report”

The CBS TV show “Person of Inter-est” has a curious theme in this age of privacy concerns: Shed-

ding privacy can be a good thing. In fact, if the information is in the right hands, it can save your life.

In the show, a billionaire computer genius, named Finch, built a city-wide monitoring system where ev-ery person, every day, is monitored. A voiceover at the show’s beginning states that it was built for the gov-ernment, which didn’t use it.

The “machine,” as it is known, has a neat trick. It’s capable of popping out a list of people who, based on the mountain of surveillance, are going to die. Finch decides to use this infor-mation to save the people in ques-tion.

To do that, he enlists some muscle in the form of Reese, a former CIA agent now presumed dead. Some-times the name that pops out of the machine is the victim, as it turns out, and sometimes it’s the perpetrator; they never know which one until the game is played out.

Finch and Reese have a curious con-cept of privacy — essentially, they don’t believe in it, at least not for

NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg announces a partnership with Microsoft to try to stop crime before it happens, shades of the CBS show “Person of Inter-est.” Photo courtesy Microsoft.

1993

2004

2005

2007

Perimeter securitytiMElinE

Photos: Avantguard.jpg. GOES WITH 2010 item

DSEI-Guardium.jpg. GOES WITH 2008 item

MDARS.jpg. GOES with 2004 item.

Hawthorne Army Depot in Hawthorne, Nev., starts using MDARS for Early User Appraisal activities. The civilian operator guard force at the depot also starts using MDARS in October 2004.

MDARS goes on display at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America

2007, and it’s not alone. Two other perim-eter security robots — the Air Force Research

Lab’s Defender UGV and the Recon Adaptive Patrol Tactical Robotic System, or RAPTRS, robot, developed by

the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego — also hit the show floor.

General Dynamics Robotic Systems begins development of the Mobile De-tection Assessment and Response System (MDARS) as part of the U.S. Army’s Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense – Product Manager Force Protection Systems project.

Frontline Robotics announces it achieved real-time, cognitive-level collaboration between fully autonomous robots working on perimeter control. The company also merges with U.S.-based White Box Robotics LLC to further develop-ments in the security robotics industry.

2008

2009

2010

2010Mission CritiCal • Fall 2012 27

Around and around they go: Perimeter security robots have been edging toward increased adaptation, with more companies getting into the fray. As these systems test out their tracks, guarding facilities around the world, companies keep adding more autonomy, with the potential that one day the robots

will operate entirely on their own.

Israel-based G-NIUS Unmanned Ground Systems unveils its AvantGuard UGV at Eurosatory 2010. The system was then delivered to the IDF.

AvantGuard allows for modular selection of payloads for comprehensive situational awareness; the UGV

can then be teleoperated or sent into the field semiautonomously.

The Israeli Defense Force begins using G-NIUS’ Guardium UGV as a counter-improvised explosive

device robot. Guardium features strap-on technology that delivers semiautonomous capabilities when ap-

plied to any manned vehicle. The vehicle then travels along a predefined route for perimeter surveillance.

Frontline Robotics introduces its Tele-Operated UGV. It’s based on the Polaris Defense MVRS platform.

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration starts using MDARS robots to patrol the desert surrounding its Nevada National Security Site.

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t


Robotsonthebeat

hree sentries patrol vast swaths of territory around the

Nevada National Security Site, keep-ing an eye on the sensitive facility, part of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The sentries don’t get tired, don’t get sick and don’t mind long, dull patrols where they might see nothing more than a jackrabbit. They work eve-nings, weekends and holidays with-out complaint.

Thousands of miles away, similar sentries work around the clock on Is-rael’s contentious southern border, putting in the hours even in inclem-ent weather or when there’s danger all around.

have their oil changed, their bat-teries topped up and their sensors wiped down now and then.

The Nevada robots are the Mobile Detection Assessment Response System (MDARS), built by General Dynamics Robotic Systems. In Israel, the stalwart sentries are from the Guardium family, built by G-NIUS.

Still farther away, new prison guards in South Korea don’t suffer from the stress of working in a high-pressure prison environment. If trouble hap-pens, these workers keep a cool head and just summon their cowork-ers for help.

All of these are, of course, robots. They take on dull, dangerous and stressful jobs and all they ask is to

sCan it or Click it:To see the South Korean prison robot in action, click or scan this barcode with your smartphone.

GDRS’ MDARS begins its patrolling career at the Nevada National Security Site. Photo courtesy Steve Scott.

ByBREttDAVIS

http://pixelcase.com.au/virtual-tours/20120517-perthdrone/#/Panorama1/

http://www.techhive.com/article/253713/forget_robocop_robo_guard_patrols_korean_prisons_forsees_trouble.html


Moving indoors, the South Korean robots were developed by the Asian Forum for Correction and the Elec-tronics and Telecommunications Research Institute and are built by industrial robot maker SMEC.

MDARS

The area patrolled by the MDARS ro-bots is remote but not insignificant to national security, says Steve Scott, the senior technical engineer for the NNSS.

It incorporates 1,370 square miles of government-owned test sites, an area slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. Many federal agencies do their testing in the area. From 1950 to 1994, 1,000 nuclear weap-ons were detonated at the NNSS.

Securing such a perimeter may be the ultimate job for a ground robot. After all, it fits the main description of a task suitable for automation — dull, dirty, sometimes dangerous,

sometimes difficult, but still impor-tant.

Five MDARS vehicles have been pounding the beat at the NNSS since 2010. Three are on the trail at any given time, with the other two rotat-ed in and out according to the main-tenance schedule.

One works in the nuclear waste buri-al pits, one rolls on paved asphalt, another does a combination of as-phalt and off-road patrol.

Perimeter Security — continued from Page 29

Another view of MDARS. Photo courtesy Steve Scott.

sCan it or Click it:To see MDARS on patrol, click or scan this barcode with your smartphone.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Res3SwQ3LRY


“Our very first deployment of them here was at our radioactive waste facility here. And they are out there patrolling after hours and weekends and holidays here, and they’re look-ing down into the burial pits and making sure nobody’s out there trying to dig something up and get away with it,” Scott says.

“It’s been absolutely excellent for that purpose. These pits are huge in the ground, where trucks can back into them. This thing pulls up there to the entrance to each pit and looks into them with its cameras and ra-dar and all and makes sure nobody’s down there after hours … and just does a wonderful job out there.”

Scott first got wind of the MDARS years ago, and in 2006 he got beta versions of the vehicle to test. The site wasn’t gentle in its evaluation.

“We ran them through three weeks of really hard testing,” he tells Mission Critical. “They did really well for us.”

The NNSS deployed “red teams” of fake intruders to try to sneak up on MDARS through the Joshua trees, but it found them all.

That positive demonstration is “what made our decision,” Scott says. “We wanted to buy some of them to use. Our very first deployment of them here was at our radioactive waste fa-cility, looking down in the burial pits to make sure nobody is trying to dig something up. It’s been absolutely excellent for that purpose.”

The vehicles are largely left alone, although they are monitored from a central command point. The vehicle can alert operators to possible in-truders or other situations through

an escalating series of communica-tions.

“If nothing out of the ordinary is hap-pening, there will be status messag-es on the computer screen where the guard is, which could be miles away,” says Brian Frederick, engi-neering product manager at GDRS.

“If something happens, anything out of the ordinary, there will be a sound to attract his attention, there will be a verbal message, there are a series of recorded messages that could be played and there would obviously be a lot more detailed information pro-vided on the screen, including live video.

“… If you played a loud alarm, if there was an intruder, it would say, in-truder spotted, and then you would go over there and it would give the information of what it had seen and have the live video of what it had seen and the camera would be track-ing the intruder as he’s moving in the area,” Frederick says.

The NNSS wasn’t MDARS’ first de-ployment. Four MDARS vehicles took to the road around the Hawthorne Army Depot, an ammunition storage site in Nevada, in 2009, after an early user appraisal held in 2005.

That appraisal involved running the robots for 12 hours a day on week-days and 24 hours a day on week-ends, according to the Space and Na-val Warfare Systems Center of San Diego, which supported the early technology work that led to MDARS (which is now handled by the Army). Site personnel were trained as op-erators, administrators and main-tainers, and the vehicles’ missions included intruder detection, moni-

toring locks on munitions bunkers and using radio-frequency identi-fication technology to track tagged munitions.

In the course of that month, the four robots patrolled 665 hours and trav-eled 3,691 miles. After the robots’ actual deployment a few years later, they managed to put up even more impressive numbers. According to GDRS, the four robots operated for 12,000 hours and traveled more than 38,000 miles over a period of 16 months on site.

It wasn’t always easy. Operators did not always see the robots as al-lowing humans to be more flexible, but in some cases worried that they would be replaced.

Over time, “I think they saw its use-fulness,” says Frederick. “There was never an actual attempt to downsize the guard force because of MDARS, they still had a role in doing daily preventive maintenance checks on the system and fueling it, and over time I think they became aware of the things that it was able to do that they either didn’t like to do or didn’t have enough staff to do.”

One example would include a 72-hour overwatch of material that was delivered over a weekend.

“The guards wouldn’t sit there for 72 straight hours. You’d have shifts, but still … it’s hard to focus for that length of time for anybody. So they started to see the benefits in that re-gard,” he says.

“I think it came down to the fact that even before MDARS got there, they had already reduced their guard force to the minimum level they were ever going to be able to reduce it to.


If MDARS ever did spot something … if they ever needed to respond to something, they would have to have X number of guards on hand. It just provided a multiplier capability for them.”

That was also the impetus behind the NNSS’ adoption of MDARS, says Scott: as a force multiplier.

“We knew back in 2006 that our bud-gets were being cut, continually re-duced. It has been my job here, as lead federal engineer for security technology, to see what can I deploy to make up for the fact we have to reduce people. I do not want to com-promise our ability here in any way, shape or form.”

G-NIUS at work

Israel’s G-NIUS, a joint venture of that country’s heavyweight defense contractors Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, has had its Guardium family of vehicles out on patrol at various locations along the country’s borders since 2008.

Right now, they are deployed on Is-rael’s southern border, “the most critical one,” says Gabi Davidson, G-NIUS’ vice president of marketing and business development. “They are used 24 hours every day.”

The systems were met with a bit of reserve in the early days, Davidson says, but, “along the years, as more people got familiar and the specific people got trained, the level of usage and operation has been extended. In the beginning, we were starting with the basic routine, and more and more as the commander got used to it, everybody was pushing more and more to get a piece of the cake.”

The systems had to plug into a very busy operating area, where other forces were carrying out their duties.

“Working together with other ele-ments, other sensors, other forces, is part of the beat,” he says. “We had to do a very smooth integration into an existing structure. On the other hand, we had to develop our own el-ement. It means we have to integrate the system into an existing one, but we had to train specific people to deal with it.”

As with MDARS, there are operators in the loop, but they only take over when necessary.

“There is always a man in the loop, but not driving,” Davidson says. “Once they see some kind of prob-lem, some kind of obstacle, the man takes control.”

MDARS, as used in the American West, can augment people by oper-ating in a remote area without get-ting bored. Israel’s border, by con-trast, is rarely boring, so in this case the unmanned vehicle augments people by taking them out of harm’s way.

“It can be operated in a very high-risk area,” Davidson says. “The main issue is to take out the risk element.”

The vehicles also help keep people out of inclement weather, including rain, fog and humidity.

“The vehicle has no complaint, is not going out for vacation, does not complain of being sick,” he says.

Defenseworld.net reported on Guardium’s Gaza border patrols and pointed out an example of how


The heavy-duty member of the Guardium family, Avantguard. AUVSI photo.

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the long robotic attention span can come in handy.

“We’ve seen several scenarios where the Guardium has proven its effec-tiveness,” Lt. Kai Hajbi told the news portal. “In one scenario, a mortar had struck the fence, punching a whole through it. The Guardium provided 103 consecutive hours of around the clock surveillance without tying up essential infantry forces or placing soldiers in danger.”

The main thrust of unmanned ground vehicles such as Guardium and MDARS is that they are really packages of sensors and software that can be ported to many kinds of vehicles.

“The vehicle itself certainly could be interchangeable,” says Frederick. “There’s no reason you couldn’t put these same sensors and software on a different vehicle,” including non-military ones.

G-NIUS has already done that. The first G-NIUS vehicle, Guardium, has given way to the Guardium MK II, a lighter variant; the MK III, a larger, heavier, faster variant; and Avant-guard MK I, the newest and largest

of the group. It’s twice as fast and can carry more than twice as much payload as the earlier models.

Guard work

The SMEC robot patrolling the halls a prison in the South Korean city Po-hang is different in many ways from Guardium and MDARS — it’s not rug-gedized and would probably just fall over if it tried to operate in a desert — but it shares one key similarity: It expands the capabilities of its hu-man coworkers without increasing their workload.

Like the UGVs, the robot can operate around its area autonomously, or a human guard can take control of it and operate it directly — in the case of the robot, with an iPad. The robot has software that can assess how a person is feeling; if the robot senses trouble, it can alert the main office.

“The purpose of developing this kind of robot is to secure prisoners’ life and safety and decrease the work-load of correctional officials in a poor working environment,” Lee Baik-Chul, the forum’s chairman, says in a Reuters video interview.

In part of a promotional video, the forum notes that the robot means that “the prisoners are protected from incidents such as suicide, ar-son and assault,” and guards can use the system to communicate with inmates without having to leave the control room.

Cost savings

In all three cases, the use of the un-manned ground vehicle expands what people can do. In so doing, they can also save money.

Scott says that factored into his deci-sion to buy MDARS in the first place — it saved him from having to build a protective infrastructure over the NNSS, which would have cost consid-erably more than deploying robots.

“I have to look at everything from an ROI, or return on investment, as well as what we call the mortgage, what it takes to keep them going,” he says.

Putting up enough lights, cameras, sensors and the wires to connect them would have cost $6 million, he says, and the cameras would have to be moved as the pits filled up, as well as maintained from environmen-


G-NIUS’ Guardium Mk II. AUVSI photo. Another view of the Guaridum Mark II. Photo courtesy G-NIUS.

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tal effects such as lightning strikes, which would have totaled $1 million each year. “That was going to be my mortgage on that system,” he says.

Using people to replicate what MDARS now does would have re-quired multiple patrols, which would have added up to $1.3 to $1.4 mil-lion a year, every year, he says, not including the cost of the patrol ve-hicles and their upkeep.

Setting up the first MDARS cost $500,000 for the vehicle, and a com-mand console, service truck, spare parts and training that totaled $1.4 million. There are also two techni-cians for servicing the robots, which cost $160,000 a year, although they and the other backup and servicing equipment can work with all three sites.

“Once that initial expense was out, the only thing I have running is the $160,000 technician [costs], plus about $50,000 for maintenance,”

he says. “So I’ve taken my mortgage down to a little over $200,000 a year … [and] have dramatically reduced our patrol requirements out there.”

The road ahead

While the future for the Korean pris-on guard robot may be pretty specif-ic — the Asian Forum of Corrections tells Reuters it wants the system to be able to handle body cavity search-es — the possibilities of using robots for patrol duty could be bright.

Davidson says the Guardium family could be suited to a variety of mis-sions, commercial as well as military.

“The mission will direct us toward the right platform and the right sensor,” he says. “Paramilitary, homeland se-curity, site protection, firefighting, all

of these are elements that can use the same capability, just put it on the relevant platform.”

NNSS’ Scott says he’s interested in the next generation of MDARS, vehi-cles he says will boast some impres-sive new capabilities and he’d like to get them in his upcoming budgets.

“If you’re having budget cuts and you’re having to lay off people, but you still have a security requirement that still needs to be met, I believe that this is one item that should be looked at by anybody that’s interest-ed in maintaining a highly effective security program,” he says.

Brett Davis is editor of Unmanned Systems.


sCan it or Click it:To see Guardium at work, click or scan this barcode with your smartphone.

G-NIUS’ Guardium Mk II on patrol. Photo courtesy G-NIUS.


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tEstinG, tEstinG

Think tankSeaBotix ROV’s path from testing to open waters

ByLEEEWINg

At SeaBotix, testing maritime and port security unmanned vehicles is a big deal.

Testing is important for most com-panies that produce unmanned ve-hicles, but for SeaBotix it is a core function.

“Essentially, SeaBotix is a design, as-sembly and testing house, so [test-ing] is critical to the overall produc-tion,” says Donald Rodocker, the company’s chairman and founder. “From the design inception, we de-sign-in the test criteria. Basically, what we do is design each compo-nent.”

“We make vehicles for port security,” Rodocker notes. “In today’s world there is a growing requirement to protect our home ports, waterways and vessels,” SeaBotix says on its website. “The use of an ROV offers many benefits to many different or-ganizations within the government. The LBV [Little Benthic Vehicle] of-fers an excellent platform to inspect hulls for objects or contraband, search home ports and waterways for potential danger, and even locate mines.”

After SeaBotix designs a part, it contracts with a vendor to build it. “There’s quite a bit of QA [quality as-surance] that they do on it,” Rodock-er says. When the parts come in, “we QA those parts” for form, fit and function and otherwise ensure that they meet the design and quality cri-

SeaBotix’ LBV300-5 in the tank at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Force Protec-tion Equipment Demonstration (FPED) VIII exhibit in 2011. AUVSI photo.


teria. Only then do the parts go into stock.

The next step is to use the parts to build subassemblies and test them.

Finally, the SeaBotix team assembles the remotely operated vehicle sys-tems, usually in small batches of five to 10. “We test at the component level, at the subassembly level and at the assembly level,” he says. At every level of testing, any necessary chang-es or fixes indicated by the results are made.

Once the ROV system is assembled, it under-goes “very rigorous testing,” Rodocker says. “It goes through a kind of an operational test of the functions on the bench.”

From there, the ROV goes into a tank to test its ability to operate in salt water and check for a range of potential problems such as electrical shorts or any anomalies in the thrusters. The next phase of testing is in the trim tank, where the vehicle’s ability to achieve proper trim and neutral bal-ance in fresh water is assessed.

When trim tank testing has been completed, the ROV moves to a pres-sure pod for testing, especially for leaks, at its full operating depth. “We have leak detectors on the vehicle,” he says. “Essentially, what we do is keep the water out.”

From there, the ROV is placed in the much larger “fly tank,” where head-ings and other control parameters are set up and the ability of its auto-pilot to operate correctly is checked out.

Thrusters are tested in part by us-

ing a Pressure Balanced Oil Filled procedure in which a bladder filled with mineral oil is attached to the thruster “so it has pressure inside the thruster as well as outside, so it’s always in equilibrium.”

SeaBotix custom configures ROVs to customers’ requirements. Op-tions include various kinds of sonar systems, grabbers and tracking sys-tems.

“We make a dozen different vehicles” of various sizes which are rated for operating depths of 150 meters up to 7,000 meters.

With hundreds of vehicles in the field, SeaBotix also provides prod-ucts for a wide range of other uses, including commercial offshore oil and gas operations, fish farming, search and rescue, water tank and pipeline inspection, water quality monitoring, observation of marine organisms, and defense. The U.S. Army has bought SeaBotix ROVs to explore booby-trapped, water-filled caves where enemy forces often cache weapons.

ROVs, which are tethered to controls operated remotely, can work well with autonomous underwater vehi-cles, Rodocker says.

“An AUV [autonomous underwater vehicle] is fantastic for going out and doing survey work,” Rodocker says. The broad underwater surveys pro-vide information needed to effec-tively employ other resources such as ROVs and helicopters to make de-tailed inspections of specific areas of interest.

SeaBotix tests to meet its own set of standards developed through years

of experience. “We do an eight-hour fly on ev-ery single vehicle,” he says. “We fly it continu-ously for eight hours.”

Evaluations of test re-sults are done at every phase, and the final as-semblers do the final tests with quality assur-ance specialists from a dedicated team looking over their shoulders.

Testing is “extremely comprehensive, and yet

we still have issues,” such as soft-ware or power glitches. “We’re build-ing products that are going into the most hostile environment.” When they test for eight hours, they may find that some components need to be replaced. “So we have a compre-hensive spares kit.”

All that testing appears to be pay-ing off. The company’s LBV300-5 achieved the highest rating in a February 2012 assessment of four ROV systems by the Department of Homeland Security.

“If you’ve got water and need to look in it, we can do something,” Rodock-er says. “We don’t do a lot in the des-ert.”

SeaBotix’ LBV300-5.


Tragedies like the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 have exacerbated the need to take

people out of dangerous maritime environments. And unmanned sys-tems have answered the call in the area of coastal border security. This Mission Critical Spotlight looks at what’s above, and just below, the surface of unmanned maritime sur-veillance.

Protector

This year, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems announced that it had built

Scanning on the dock of the bay

a larger version of the Protector un-manned surface vessel. The new Protector model is 11 meters long, with a wider range of weaponry. Ra-fael had not announced who the cli-ent was for the larger version of the USV or the waterways in which they would be used.

When Rafael first developed the Protector USV, the Republic of Sin-gapore navy was one of its first cus-tomers. The Singapore navy began using the vessel for surveillance and reconnaissance operations in 2005 for peacekeeping operations in the

North Persian Gulf. The system also worked with the navy’s Endurance manned ships.

The Israeli Defense Forces have used the Protector on routine coastal pa-trol assignments since 2008. Since then, the IDF has kept relatively quiet about its use. But reports show that the USV has been used in espionage missions against Iran, as well as elec-tronic warfare, submarine detection and underwater mine detection.

The Protector is an unmanned inte-grated naval combat system, based on a rigid hull inflatable boat. It has

Rafael’s Protector USV can be used for coastal patrol and engage with enemy ships. Photo via Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

sCan it or Click it:Click or scan this barcode with your smartphone to see Rafael’s Protector USV in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBW2mSpEyi0


a complete sensor, navigation and weapon suite that can be remotely controlled from shore or from ships at sea. The operational model in-cludes a 7.62-millimeter mini-Ty-phoon cannon. That allows for target acquisition, identification and en-gagement from long distances. The company says it proved to be highly effective in its deployments in the Northern Persian Gulf, where it was used to conduct maritime security and interdiction operations.

“The unmanned vessel’s work is ab-solutely reasonable, and we are sat-isfied with it,” says an IDF official. “It can carry electronic systems and be part of routine operations, assist in naval defense and operate in battle zones and draw fire, thus saving lives. Much thought has been invest-ed in this direction.”

Sensing under the sea

Kongsberg Maritime’s diver detec-tion sonar DDS 9000 expands on previous technology by using wide-band signal processing, improved signal-to-nose ratios and electronic vertical beam steering. It’s also the first time the company has used a Linux-based open architecture for the server. The DDS 9000 can de-tect hard-to-spot divers from a long range.

The DDS 9000 is designed as a mili-tarized, off-the-shelf product. On the outside, the system uses blade serv-er processing hardware and a rugge-dized laptop. The related DDS 9001 consists of a titanium sonar head that connects directly to a surface interface unit.

Internally, the DDS 9000 has built-in pitch, roll, heading and depth

sensors. With 256 beams, each at a width of 1.5 degrees, the system’s narrow beams allow for discrimina-tion of very small targets such as divers. The system has a maximum range of 1,000 meters with detec-tion of diver-like targets at ranges in excess of 600 meters. Maximum detection range capability is strongly dependent on water temperature and salinity. Other targets such as swimmer delivery vehicles and sub-marines can also be detected.

In all, Kongsberg has delivered more than 50 systems to the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and other govern-ment agencies for surveillance. The DDS 9000 specifically meets the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s cost requirement per foot of pro-tected shoreline. Applications for the DDS 9000 include fixed and mobile systems for port security.

Kongsberg Maritime brings its line of diver detection sonar from the front lines of the military to coastal security. Photo courtesy Kongsberg Maritime.


Researchers at the University of Texas this past summer ignited a firestorm of concerns about

the integrity of the civilian GPS sys-tem when the team reportedly took control of an unmanned aircraft by mimicking — or “spoofing” — GPS signals relied upon for navigation. In ensuing media interviews, the professor overseeing the project raised alarm bells about the poten-tial for unmanned aerial systems to be commandeered and turned into weapons, equating the threat of so-called spoofing with airplane hi-jackings. Every UAS flying in the U.S. airspace “could be a potential mis-sile used against us,” Professor Todd Humphreys told Fox News last June.

others with the requisite expertise to answer that very question. As it turns out, spoofing is hardly a new issue. Papers have been written on the subject since the 1990s, and in 2001 the U.S. Department of Trans-portation broadly examined vulner-abilities in the GPS system relating to aviation, maritime and ground appli-cations.

As the 2001 DOT vulnerability as-sessment demonstrated, spoofing is not a concern unique to UAS. It has implications for any technology that depends on GPS for guidance, whether it is manned or unmanned aircraft, a cell phone or a car. In fact, commercial airliners are rely-ing more and more heavily on GPS

GPS spoofing: fact or fiction?

The experiment caught the atten-tion of security officials and the U.S. Congress. Department of Homeland Security officials invited the Texas team to replicate its experiment at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The House Homeland Security Committee, meanwhile, summoned Humphreys to testify at a July subcommittee hearing. For weeks, the media ran with the sensa-tionalized claims about alleged vul-nerabilities in the civilian GPS system — without critically examining the technical issues involved in spoofing.

So just how big of an issue is GPS spoofing? AUVSI subsequently en-gaged engineers, academics, ex-perts on navigation systems and

The University of Texas Cockrell School of Engineering demonstrates GPS spoofing on the university’s football field. All photos courtesy the Cockrell School of Engineering.


tECHnoloGY GaP

signals to locate the runways at air-ports, and with the advent of the next generation air traffic control system, all aircraft — manned and unmanned — will rely on GPS for navigation.

Spoofing is also not as simple or easy as news reports suggest. To success-fully spoof a GPS signal, one must have the equipment and capability to broadcast a counterfeit signal at a high enough power level to over-power authentic GPS signals. One must know the location of the target vehicle and be able to track it. If the target vehicle is not in close proximi-ty to the spoofing device, a detection system such as radar is required. Meanwhile, you need custom soft-ware to make adjustments to the target vehicle’s course. It took the University of Texas team four years

to develop the necessary software, and Humphreys has acknowledged that the skills involved in spoofing are “outside the capability of any av-erage American citizen.”

That said, the industry takes the po-tential for spoofing seriously and is already advancing technologies to prevent it. Many unmanned aircraft have alternate navigation systems, such as radio links and backup in-ertial systems, which provide re-dundancy to GPS. Other backup technologies exist — or are being developed — that autonomously guide unmanned aircraft to a safe landing at a predetermined location in the unlikely event of interference with navigation signals. Other spoof-ing countermeasures have been proposed since the 1990s, some of which are relatively simple software

changes to the civilian GPS system.

The military, meanwhile, deploys a technology known as SAASM, or Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module, to encrypt satellite signals and thwart GPS spoofing of military aircraft. It is unclear at this time, however, whether SAASM technolo-gy will transition in some form to the civilian market in the years to come.

The University of Texas experiment demonstrated that, in a controlled environment where an aircraft is kept low to the ground, hovering in place and equipped with minimal safeguards, spoofing may be feasi-ble. One rarely finds such ideal con-ditions in the real world. Nonethe-less, there are several technologies available to thwart spoofing — just in case.

The University of Texas team performed their GPS spoofing demonstration again at White Sands Missile Range for the Department of Homeland Security after this test on campus.


When Maj. Robert Allen started working with SWAT teams in 1985, the most high-tech tools

he had to improve situational aware-ness were a mirror to hold around corners and a flashlight taped to his shotgun.

“Our biggest advantage years ago was we would just use mirrors to where we wouldn’t have to stick our head around corners ourselves to any threats. We would just use mir-rors.”

Now, like many SWAT teams across the country, Allen’s team, under the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s depart-ment in Florida, uses robots. The SWAT team shares four robots with the county’s explosive ordnance dis-posal unit — a Foster-Miller Talon, a Northrop Grumman Remotec F6A, a QinetiQ Dragon Runner and a Sea-Botix LVB 300-5 for any underwater work. Allen says the SWAT team also has a ReconRobotics Recon Scout.

Fifteen years ago, the department shifted toward more advanced view-ing optics, and along the way, the EOD team raised the SWAT team’s awareness to robotics.

“We started small,” says Allen. “And there are some smaller, affordable little robots you can hand throw.”

The SWAT team started with robots such as the Remington Eye Ball. From there the force moved onto robots capable of going up stairs and over laundry — common issues when try-ing to find a suspect in a house.

“The SWAT guys, I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a little bit of egos in-volved, to have SWAT guys stand down, stay back behind cover so we could insert a robot,” says Allen. “It was a little bit of cultural education involved there. It was a while before the old time SWAT guys really saw the use, got on board with the tech-nology to see what the robots could produce for us.”

However, when the SWAT team, particularly its older members, saw suspects come out and surrender after sending a robot inside instead of people, many converted. Though using the robots isn’t without frus-tration from time to time.

“Robots are slow,” says Allen. “Some-times SWAT guys can be, you know, they’re Type-A personalities and they want to get things done, and the robots are slow and methodical, so we’ve had to change our thinking and training a little bit.”

SWAT botsEnD UsErs

A huge difference between the EOD team, which also does all the mainte-nance on the robots, and the SWAT team is EOD missions involve static objects, and EOD can take more time evacuating the area and evalu-ating the situation by sending robots downrange, says Allen. The live tar-gets SWAT teams are focused on are a much different story.

“We’ve had guys stay behind the ro-bot, just follow it and walk behind it. We’ve had guys tip them over, where they’re on their side and now they’re useless. Our robots have been as-saulted with baseball bats, stuff like that. So it’s not that difficult to take a robot out of commission,” say Allen.

Robots also take the guesswork out of knowing if a suspect is inside a building at all, “even if the robot just confirms that for us, and we say yes, he is in there,” says Allen. “We can watch remotely ... and right up un-til they put hands on the guy, we’re watching him.”

But the tools are invaluable when they allow a SWAT team to stand down and out of harm’s way.

“First and foremost, our primary resolution for any incident we go on is a peaceful surrender, and the robots really help to make that hap-pen,” says Allen. “There’s something about them that when they see a robot come in, and they’re not sure what it’s capable of doing. … They re-ally don’t know how to take them, so they have assisted us many, many times.”

how high-tech tools came to high-risk ops

Robots like the Recon Scout have replaced low-tech alternatives for SWAT teams. Photo courtesy ReconRobotics.

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