TechX Contest Preps Non-Superpower Military Bots for Urban War

• robotics
• military
• warfare
• DARPA
• TechX

SINGAPORE — Uni-Seeker is stalling beneath an elevator panel at Nanyang Technological University here, scanning a hallway with its laser eye, frustrated as all hell. The waist-high robot, an unarmed research mod of iRobot's ATRV Junior, hovers its arm over the panel, recording footage with a camera and analyzing its buttons. But Uni-Seeker is struggling with 3D objects again, this time misidentifying which button to press because of the panel's reflective surface. Dejected, the robot refuses to go upstairs.

Pang Wee Ching, the bot's software guru, reprograms Uni-Seeker four times before it finally seeks out and presses the correct button. The elevator doors open and Uni-Seeker scoots in, ready for its next challenge: pushing the correct button on the inside of the elevator. For the past several months, Pang and her team, Evolution, have been testing and tweaking Uni-Seeker in preparation for the TechX Challenge, Singapore's first government-sponsored robotics competition. Only six teams, pared down from a field of 28, made it past the qualifying rounds to reach the finals this weekend.

If this summer's Russian invasion of Georgia taught smaller nations like Singapore anything, it's that military superpowers won't stop trying to lap the field with next-gen defense technology. On the heels of the United Kingdom's Grand Challenge in August, TechX teams have been taking their cue from the United States' DARPA challenges model to begin levelling the urban warfare playing field.

While last fall's DARPA Urban Challenge had vehicles navigate autonomously through outdoor environments, Singapore's Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA) requires the bots to perform a series of tasks inside a building. TechX robots will begin the challenge outside, where they will navigate obstacles to enter a building, climb a flight of stairs, travel up an elevator, touch targets and then exit the building—all in under an hour and without human assistance. The Singapore government is offering a big cash prize for a small country of 4.6 million: about $700,000.

"We cannot rely on numbers and brute force to safeguard the security of our nation," Philip Chan, director of research and development at the DSTA, writes in an e-mail. "We need to leverage technology as a force multiplier to build up a strong defense force."

The DSTA has been exploring the use of unmanned ground vehicles since 2000, he says, focusing on the development of artificial intelligence with appropriate military applications. So far, the government has used commercial, off-the-shelf robots in chemical, biological, radiological and explosive, or CBRE, operations. Chan says the agency wants to use more locally developed robots to help in homeland security and counterterrorist operations. The DSTA's goal is to improve robotic artificial intelligence so it can build machines to perform dangerous tasks—reconnaissance, surveillance and the handling of hazardous materials—that American robots already can.

Back at Nanyang Technological University, Michael Lau acknowledges the urgency of the research but says the AI for urban warfare just isn't ready. "We don't really believe fully autonomous robots are possible yet," says the Evolution team supervisor. "How does a robot differentiate between friend and foe?"

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