Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Sandia Labs - Multi-Modal Vehicle Concept Simulation [1080p]

Sandia Labs - Multi-Modal Vehicle Concept Simulation  


Imagine a mission where you have to covertly fly into an area, traverse through water, across land, and overcome obstacles along the way. That might seem impossible with a single unmanned vehicle. How could one vehicle overcome so many terrains and obstacles? That would take a team of unmanned aerial, undersea, and ground vehicles, right? Not according to Intelligent Systems, Robotics, & Cybernetics (ISRC), where we specialize in tackling the most difficult and unique mobility challenges.

The Multi-Modal Vehicle concept is a single unmanned system capable of flying, swimming, driving, and hopping across a variety of terrains and obstacles. ISRC has built and conducted limited testing on conceptual hardware, and while the concept may appear to be off in the distant future, our testing has shown that this concept could soon be a reality. 


Propulsion may be the easiest challenge. Communications with this unmanned vehicle would be difficult, so it would have to be autonomous. Given the variability of the environments to be encountered, mission planning will be difficult as well, and a lot of sensors will be needed. 

See IEEE Spectrum for another take at a UxV
IROS 2013: Quadrotor Wheel Can Fly, Float, and Roll - IEEE Spectrum


If you ever watched Irwin Allen's "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", with the flying mini-sub, this concept may seem familiar, except it swam-flew-swam and was manned and reusable. Of course there is also the james bond submersible lotus auto which drives-swims-drives.
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