Say what you like about various military outfits, they frequent have some of the best gear when it comes to technology. Case in point is Lockheed Martin, along with the US Army’s Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, who have recently demonstrated an autonomous convoy of military vehicles able to operate in “urban environments”.
The demonstration took place at Fort Hood and saw the vehicles negotiating obstacles that most of us find every day. Stopped vehicles, oncoming traffic, pedestrians and traffic circles were all thrown at the Autonomous Mobility Appliqué System (AMAS) during testing. According to AMAS program manager David Simon “…AMAS CAD hardware and software performed exactly as designed, and dealt successfully with all of the real-world obstacles that a real-world convoy would encounter.”
The Unmanned Mission Module section of the AMAS program can apparently be applied to just about any military vehicle and the LIDAR sensor and GPS receiver used, along with the included software, is available in a kit for retrofitting vehicles for autonomous driving. Now if we had something like this for South African drivers, perhaps we’d have a few fewer accidents every day.
Source: Lockheed Martin via Engadget