Scientific research sights aim at the battlefield
Create unmanned equipment with "18 martial arts"
Fang Jiao reporter Zhang Qiang
The robots in the shelter hospital, the fast-moving targets for assessing the performance of weapon strikes, and the fully autonomously innovative man-carrying robots... The "Unmanned Combat System" technological innovation team of the School of Intelligence Science, National University of Defense Technology, keeps a close eye on the future battlefield and lets one Batch after batch of unmanned equipment with "eighteen martial arts" marched from the laboratory to the future battlefield.
An extremely itchy face and swollen eyes that can only be opened...Even with such severe allergic symptoms, Peng Yuzhe, a member of the "Unmanned Combat System" technology innovation team of the School of Intelligent Science, National University of Defense Technology, still stays in the factory. , Together with other members, for several days in a row inserting buckles, wiring, wrapping tape... as busy as a spinning top.
In just 5 days, 5 people just "transformed" a pile of car wheels, frame and other parts into 3 unmanned target vehicles, and completed the vehicle test and delivery within the specified time.
"The urgent need for the emergency forces to seek to win what is needed is our team's consistent style." Peng Yuzhe said.
Over the years, the team has focused on cutting-edge technologies in the field of unmanned combat and has undertaken a large number of national and military key scientific research projects. It has won two first prizes, four second prizes, and third prizes for scientific and technological achievements at the military and provincial and ministerial levels. There are 6 awards, and a number of technologies represented by ground-based unmanned system autonomous driving technology are at the leading domestic level, laying a scientific and technological foundation for the enhancement of our army’s new-quality combat effectiveness.
"Running brother" enhances battlefield rescue capabilities
Last year, a real-soldier training exercise for the treatment of infectious diseases and battlefield trauma quietly started in Kunshan, Jiangsu.
In the square cabin hospital built in the wild, robots of different models shuttled through the narrow medical cabins without any delay.
They can turn and turn sideways proficiently to avoid obstacles, distribute medicines, medical equipment and other items between pharmacies and wards, and even recycle medical wastes and transport patients with mild illnesses, acting as the "running brothers" of medical staff. Received unanimous praise from the training officers and soldiers.
These new "runners" are just one of the in-hospital patient/diagnostic materials coordinated dispatch system developed by the team.
In April last year, Wu Tao, a researcher of the team, received a notice from a unit regarding the deployment of intelligent rapid deployment of hospital accounting and cabin integration scenarios and the need for in-hospital unmanned logistics in infectious disease mode. He immediately organized team members to start research on intelligence.
Half a year later, everyone took the large, medium and small unmanned transfer robots with confidence to Kunshan to start joint debugging with various units.
"You robots are not accurate in positioning, how to perform tasks." After the platform rehearsal, the demand side's words seemed like a basin of cold water poured on them.
It turns out that these robots initially adopted the lidar positioning scheme, but due to the single scene of the hospital in the joint debugging environment, the narrow space and the irregular gathering of people, the robots are "confused" as they walk, and it is difficult to distinguish the "stupefaction" in the same place. direction.
The team members believe that: “In a faster-paced and more intense actual combat, time is your life, and you can’t go wrong in logistics.” They quickly modified the plan, began to build a vector map, and proposed a set of rough positioning and local high-precision on the way. The intelligent navigation scheme combined with positioning-adding visual information to guide on the basis of the original lidar sensor.
To this end, they fought day and night, tagging every door, charging pile and other easily confusing objects in the hospital with different labels, and collecting tens of thousands of samples into the system.
Carrying out research on multi-robot adaptive competition cloud scheduling technology, and development of cloud brain-assisted robot task coordination system... After many major adjustments to the plan and algorithm, the "running man" finally has super "features", which can be like human beings. The same perceives the surrounding environment, even if there are many tasks and the surrounding people are crowded, it can perform various logistics tasks without interference.
Now, the system has realized the functions of autonomous positioning, autonomous obstacle avoidance, path planning, conflict resolution, remote intervention and other functions of robots in small medical cabins. While improving the efficiency of distribution, it also reduces the risk of infection caused by personnel contact, thereby helping to improve the ability of battlefield rescue.
"Trainers" sharpen a batch of sharp weapons
As the team became more and more famous, tasks related to the overall situation of national defense and army building came one after another, and many problems that the troops could not solve for many years also came to the door.
That year, a certain unit evaluated the strike performance of a certain weapon.
After several studies, they proposed to abandon the practice of using fixed targets in previous training tests and make the target move like an enemy.
How to make the target move?
They found the team, hoping to develop a "sparring partner" for it-a high-speed moving target for equipment testing and appraisal.
But for such a large driverless car, the team has not tried it before.
On the one hand, there is the strong demand of the troops, on the other hand, there are many difficulties in the unknown field. The team's choice is never going forward.
They immediately organized capable backbones, went deep into the Gobi Desert, and collected key parameters on site.
In order to simulate the attacked target more realistically, the team needs to overcome the problem of high-speed and high-precision coordinated control of multiple heavy-duty trucks. This not only requires the team to drive at a fixed speed and high speed, but also always maintain a positive and negative error of no more than one between the two vehicles. The distance of meters.
Any mistake or negligence will lead to a complete failure of the test.
Theoretical analysis, simulation test, technical requirement docking, vehicle model selection, communication system testing...Thank you the instructor, Tan Jun, led everyone through countless program discussions, technical details docking, and field testing at the shooting range, and finally solved this problem.
The team members said excitedly: "Just do a few more full-function tests, and you can stabilize the technical state and wait for acceptance and delivery."
However, in a formation test, the ABS fault lights of the following vehicles flashed suddenly.
Is it an accidental fault alarm, or is there a problem with the car itself?
Will it cause other problems?
In order to answer this series of questions, the team members came to the Gobi Desert, which was unbearably hot, and carried out formation tests at different speeds and distances under the scorching sun, and conducted item-by-item analysis. They quickly found the root cause, and immediately Carry out relevant technical improvements to ensure that the equipment is foolproof.
In the midsummer of last year, a certain equipment test was in full swing.
Along with the roar, a weapon roared out, accurately hitting the simulated attack target.
"This system works." The person in charge of the tested equipment development department gave a thumbs up.
And this is the highest commendation for this scientific research team that aimed the scientific research "front sight" on the battlefield.
In fact, this is not the first time the team has forged "sparring members" for weapons and equipment.
Since 2014, they have developed more than ten types of mobile target systems, including large, medium and small models of self-propelled and towed targets, in the face of increasing demands for actual combat training and weapon equipment testing and appraisal.
The desert Gobi, the coast of the Bohai Sea...The frontline troops in the north and south of the sky, with the help of "trainers", sharpened batch after batch of national weapons.
Developed a "backpack" robot that can be carried by individual soldiers
The US military stationed in Afghanistan once used PackBot robots to replace soldiers to perform tasks. About one-sixth of the more than 6,000 PackBots placed on the battlefield were blown up during the mission.
This means that the robot has saved the lives of thousands of soldiers.
This kind of "backpack" robot used in actual combat has attracted the attention of the team. They are determined to "also build our army's single-soldier portable robot and be more advanced than the US army." For the team, this is a brand new topic. , The difficulty can be imagined, just which kind of walking system the robot should use has troubled them for several months.
"Portable robots need strong obstacle crossing and travel capabilities, and they need to have wheeled and crawler driving functions." Instructor Xu Haijun introduced that traditional ground platforms have only a single driving function, or simply overlap the wheels and crawlers together, but This often results in a lot of redundancy in structure and function, making "portable" "inportable".
When everyone was at a loss, Professor Xu Xiaojun saw a scene of "a disabled person folds a wheelchair into the trunk of a vehicle" on the side of the road.
This moment inspired him: "We can learn from the principle of folding wheelchairs, design the rim as a structure with several petals, and then manipulate its deformation through the drive structure, can't we achieve multi-modal functions?"
He immediately organized everyone to refine and perfect this inspiration, and conduct research on its structural design, deformation principle, and driving characteristics.
In 2018, after hundreds of trials, a fully independent and innovative wheel-foot multi-modal robot functional prototype that can be carried by individual soldiers came out.
It was also in this year that the robot emerged in the third "Over Dangers 2018" Land Unmanned System Challenge.
In the arena, the robot lived up to expectations and attracted everyone's attention as soon as it appeared.
"The performance of the robot needs to be tested in the actual combat environment. The competition venue selected for the challenge is often close to the actual combat. This just gives us these products that'come out' from the laboratory, providing an excellent opportunity for testing." Xu Xiaojun Express.
Today, the team is keeping an eye on the future battlefield and has developed batch after batch of unmanned equipment with "18 martial arts". These equipment are being tested in actual combat and are heading for the future battlefield.