IEEE Spectrum August, 2011 - 33

the battlefield-those capable of planning and carrying out missions and learning from their experiences-several key technological advances are needed, including improved sensing, more
agile testing, and seamless interoperability. Even then, a basic
question will remain: How can we equip these robots to make
critical decisions on their own?
asks me what will happen when
robots become so smart that they can clone themselves. He
seems to assume it's a given: Robots will someday be agile
enough to create exact copies of their mechanical bodies and
of the software code comprising their "brains." All he wants to
know from me is when-not if-this great day will arrive. I suggest that he not hold his breath.
As a researcher at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and a
board member of the world's largest association for unmanned
systems-the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems
International-I've been working with robots for more than
two decades, starting with underwater vehicles, then moving
to air and ground vehicles, and most recently addressing collaborations among robots like those we demonstrated at the
Robotics Rodeo. I can attest that while robots are definitely getting smarter, it is no easy task to make them so smart that they
need no adult supervision. And call me a skeptic, but I doubt
they'll be cloning themselves anytime soon.
That said, I'm amazed at the pace of progress in the field.
With thousands of researchers now engaged in advancing the
intelligence and autonomy of unmanned systems, new breakthroughs are announced seemingly every week. Both the variety and the number of unmanned systems now deployed are
breathtaking. UAVs run the gamut from the 1-metric-ton MQ-1
Predator drone made by General Atomics to AeroVironment's
tiny 430-gram Wasp micro air vehicle. There are unmanned
A reporter on the phone

ground vehicles that roll on treads like tanks, walk like dogs,
and slither like snakes. Unmanned maritime vehicles include
submarine-like vessels that can cruise underwater for kilometers and boatlike craft that patrol for pirates, smugglers, and
other criminal types.
But none of these systems are fully autonomous. The RQ-4
Global Hawk UAV, made by Northrop Grumman, is guided
by satellite waypoint navigation, yet it still requires a human
pilot sitting in a remote ground station, plus others to operate the drone's sensors and analyze the data being sent back.
iRobot's PackBot tactical robot is teleoperated by means of a
video-game-style controller, complete with joystick. Even the
driverless vehicles that participated in the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency's Grand Challenge competitions
in 2004, 2005, and 2007 weren't entirely autonomous, as the
courses they had to negotiate were tightly controlled.
So why haven't we seen a fully autonomous robot that can
sense for itself, decide for itself, and seamlessly interact with
people and other machines? Unmanned systems still fall
short in three key areas: sensing, testing, and interoperability.
Although the most advanced robots these days may gather data
from an expansive array of cameras, microphones, and other
sensors, they lack the ability to process all that information in
real time and then intelligently act on the results. Likewise, testing poses a problem, because there is no accepted way to subject
an autonomous system to every conceivable situation it might
encounter in the real world. And interoperability becomes an
issue when robots of different types must interact; even more
difficult is getting manned and unmanned systems to interact.
the enormous challenge of robotic sensing, consider this factoid, reported last year in The Economist: "During
2009, American drone aircraft...sent back 24 years' worth of

t o A p p r e C I At e

From LeFt: GeorGia institute oF technoLoGy; honeyweLL; northrop Grumman

Mapping swarmbots

T-Hawk

X-47B

D e v e l o p e r s Georgia tech, University of

D e v e l o p e r honeywell International

D e v e l o p e r northrop Grumman Corp.

D e s c r i p t i o n Vertical takeoff and landing 8-kg

D e s c r i p t i o n U.S. navy's stealth unmanned combat

micro air vehicle equipped with color and infrared
video cameras for intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance. Can hover and observe for up to
50 minutes at altitudes of up to 3000 meters.

aerial vehicle designed for takeoff and landing on an
aircraft carrier. has a range of 3380 kilometers and
can carry up to 2000 kg of ordnance in two weapons
bays. originated as a project of the Defense Advanced
research projects Agency.

pennsylvania, and Jet propulsion Laboratory
D e s c r i p t i o n Collaborative robots that can autono-

mously map an entire building for first-responder
and military applications. each palm-sized robot is
equipped with a video camera for identifying doorways
and windows and a laser scanner for measuring walls.
s tat u s Developed under U.S. Army research Lab's

five-year, $38 million Micro Autonomous Systems and
technology program. Mapping experiment conducted
in 2010; next iteration to include small UAVs.
spectrum.ieee.org

s tat u s Deployed in Iraq starting in 2007 for roadside

bomb detection. Surveyed damage at Fukushima
nuclear power plant following March 2011 earthquake
and tsunami in northeastern Japan.

s tat u s First test flight February 2011. Scheduled

deployment by 2018.

AuguSt 2011 * iEEE SpEctrum * NA

http://spectrum.ieee.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum August, 2011