As soldier safety in combat continues to be a priority, the military and researchers are leveraging artificial intelligence in service vehicles.
Dr. Thomas Ferris is working with The Crew Optimization and Augmentation Technologies (COAT) program to support human crew members in future ground vehicle systems.
“This project looks at sharing jobs between humans and autonomy,” Ferris said. “This requires knowing which jobs are best suited for humans and which for artificial intelligence
(AI) agents, and how to ensure mission effectiveness of the human-vehicle system as responsibilities and roles change.”
Soldiers will have the ability to see all external activity from inside the vehicle and be protected by its armor, making missions substantially safer.
Technologies being investigated include video cameras capturing real-time surroundings and feeding data back to soldiers inside the vehicle. Soldiers inside the cockpit can use these feeds to drive the vehicle they are currently passengers in or drive a completely separate remote-controlled vehicle. The soldier’s task responsibilities need to be flexible in order to support management of the vehicle and promote safer, more effective mission performance.
In a recent experiment, test subjects drove military vehicles through eight courses at Camp Grayling. Each course required a different driving function to determine how subjects perform using display configurations, including helmet- and vehicle-mounted visual displays.
“I always want to make sure that where my contributions are going are toward safer and better systems for soldiers, and I feel this is both an exciting and noble research effort,” Ferris said.
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