DARPA announced successful test of its new autonomous vehicles on Wednesday , all part of the agency ’s Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency ( RACER ) program . And while the mental testing sound telling , we found ourselves transfixed by one little ocular detail : The tank ’s glowing green eyes .
The RACER Heavy Platform ( RHP ) vehicle are enormous , count in at 12 gross ton and measuring 20 feet long . The vehicle are programmed using theTextron M5base system , already used in many driverless fomite by the U.S. Army , and are meant to complement the RACER Fleet Vehicles ( RFVs ) which are comparatively modest at just 2 wads and 11 feet retentive .
The vehicle tests , aided by teams from the University of Washington and NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory , befall at military training sites in Texas back in late 2023 , but are just being announced by DARPAtoday .
Screenshot: DARPA / YouTube
picture from the Texas tests are now available onYouTube , demonstrating the to the full autonomous driving of these mammoth vehicle in off - road conditions . And again , we ca n’t stop star into the vehicle ’s shine dark-green eyes . They give the full demonstration an almost Pixaresque feeling . Just expect at that little brass .
What ’s the heap with the unripe center ? A representative for DARPA tell Gizmodo in an e-mail , “ … .it ’s just an index number light to show the position of the vehicle . Green = it ’s on and in autonomy mode . ”
DARPA also posted a new video toYouTubeshowing the smaller RFV examination , which were noted for their adaptability in an self-reliant mode . The team running the mental test had no experience in the region , make it as close to refreshful for them as potential . The end , of course , was to see how these type of vehicle could perform in a completely foreign environs .
“ Using fully unoccupied RFVs , RACER demonstrated self-directed movement within a 15 square naut mi terrain orbit including extremely various footing vegetation cover , trees , bushes , rocks , gradient , obstructed ditches , and creek crossings typical of the wide-ranging , complex Texas terrain conversant to armored maneuver , ” DARPA say in its press release .
DARPA has been work out on autonomous vehicles for X , starting in earnest back in 1983 with the Strategic Computing Initiative . And it ’s incredible how far the U.S. military has fare . During testing , theAutonomous Land Vehicleof 1985 would get confused with just a little bit of snow on the road . But that kind of obstruction is clearly no upshot here in the 2020s .
“ Having two radically different types of vehicles helps us come along towards RACER ’s goal of platform agnostic liberty in complex , mission - relevant off - road environs that are significantly more unpredictable than on - route conditions , ” Stuart Young , RACER program manager , sound out onWednesday .
unluckily , it does n’t appear the RFV has any nerveless color modes . At least none that we can see like the large vehicle ’s glowing dark-green eyes .
Darpa
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