Oshkosh Defense, a division of Oshkosh Corporation, has signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Army's Tank and Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC) to refine technology for operation of unmanned ground vehicles in convoy missions in real-world environments.
The CRADA calls for a three-year collaboration between the Army and Oshkosh to integrate a Convoy Active Safety Technology (CAST) surrogate system onto Oshkosh's unmanned TerraMax vehicle. The objective is to create a lead vehicle that can navigate and operate in missions, while communicating route information to another unmanned follower vehicle. The vehicles must be able to operate near-autonomous in a safe manner among people, animals, vehicles, and other obstacles at operational speeds and in tactical environments.
Under the CRADA, Oshkosh will provide necessary hardware and software and assist with integrating the CAST system to ensure it interacts with TerraMax effectively. Furthermore, Oshkosh will use the data to add or modify the vehicle's behavior modes and trajectory generation to affect relevant tactical behaviors for convoy missions.
Oshkosh also will provide non-proprietary platform information to assist in the integration of CAST technology into other Oshkosh vehicles, such as the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT) or Heavy Equipment Transporter (HET).