Ad Hoc Networking For Unmanned Ground Vehicles Design And Evaluation At Command Control Communications Intelligence Surveillance And Reconnaissance On The Move

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) participated in the command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) On-the-Move (OTM) experiment that was held at Fort Dix, New Jersey, during the summer of 2006. The C4ISR OTM experiment was designed to examine the effectiveness that advanced C4ISR technologies have on an Army Future Combat Systems (FCS)-based Infantry Company and Reconnaissance Troop. The experiment included live Soldier exercises, with each Soldier being connected to a battlefield tactical network. ARL's objective in the exercise was to demonstrate system-level integration of developing technologies for small unit combat operations aimed at improving situational awareness. ARL brought to the experiment expertise in unattended ground sensing technology, wireless mobile ad hoc communication, and information fusion. The ARL C4ISR system included multimodal unattended ground sensors, a trip wire imager, multiple human-portable robotic vehicles (PackBots), and an unmanned scout/light cargo carrying robotic vehicle (R-Gator). This report discusses the work done at ARL on the mobile ad hoc networking system for controlling robotic assets, which was created for the C4ISR OTM experiment. Further, it examines the results of a number of field tests performed in preparation for and during the experiment.