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Jumping robot to get tested in Afghanistan

Army Col. Peter Newell, head of the Rapid Equipping Force, walked through the streets of Kandahar, Afghanistan, with ground commanders, who pointed to the 18-foot walls that line the many compounds both inside and outside the city.

On patrols, soldiers saddled with 100-pound loads either must scale the walls or kick down the doors to search the compounds, putting soldiers at risk from booby traps or utter exhaustion. Without access to an overhead unmanned air system, the units are also left vulnerable to an ambush.

Ground commanders told Newell they need another option.

“The tactical problem is, how do we sort what compound to look into and what not to?” Newell said. “How do we look over a wall before we go over it if I don’t have access to a UAS? What can I give the average squadron platoon that they can carry that allows them to repetitively look over walls?”

Newell’s acquisition agency, which has bought soldiers such lifesaving gadgets as the Raven UAS and the Sniper Pod, turned again to robots — and found the Sand Flea.

It was first developed by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and is built by Boston Dynamics and Sandia National Laboratories. The Sand Flea looks like a laptop with four wheels. But it can leap up to 24 feet high, landing on its wheels every time.

Mounted with a camera, the Sand Flea can be remotely operated by soldiers, who can send the robot over the wall, drive it around to get an inside look at the compound, and then launch it back over the wall to search the next compound.

The REF will ship two Sand Fleas to Afghanistan this winter to be tested. Newell ordered eight more to gauge what soldiers think, but if the tests go well, he said, ground commanders likely will want thousands more shipped immediately.

Pistons connected to carbon dioxide canisters give the robot its vertical leap.

Second-story leaps

Boston Dynamics engineer Marc Raibert said the 10-pound Sand Flea can leap so that soldiers can put it through second-story windows. Engineers designed the wheels and ruggedized the camera to absorb the landings.

Raibert said soldiers can count on the Sand Flea to land on its wheels ready to drive because engineers stabilized the robot in flight.

Thanks to a small radio mounted inside, soldiers can operate the Sand Flea with a standard operator control unit designed for other robots, so training to use it likely will be short.

“It is easy to drive,” Raibert said. “It takes a little practice to aim the hops, especially when jumping through a window, but no more skill than a good EOD [explosive ordnance disposal] operator already has.”

If the robot catches on in Afghanistan, it could be a quick U-turn from the scrap heap for which the Sand Flea was headed.

Newell might soon have to find a way to mass-produce the jumping robot: Each one is now made by hand inside Boston Dynamics’ lab.

Recon Scout and RHex

However, the Sand Flea is not the only robot Newell is looking at. He’s already equipped four brigades in Afghanistan with 100 “throwbots” — the Recon Scout XT. The 1.3-pound robot looks like a dumbbell, with wheels instead of weights.

“Soldiers love it,” Newell said. “You can throw it as far and hard as you can and it lands, and then you drive it.”

The colonel said he plans to send throwbots to two more brigades for soldiers to carry in their packs.

RHex, a robot inspired by a cockroach, might soon save soldiers and Marines from searching through the muck.

The Rapid Equipping Force received the request for a RHex-like robot in May 2009, but most robots can’t travel through high grass, Newell said.

Rubber attachments to RHex’s many legs allow the robot to move, slide, fall and grasp — all at once. Multiple legs moving at the same time are the key to keeping Rex from getting bogged down. The robot can even swim and drive to inspect those canals under mud and water.

Newell said he plans to ship the first RHex robots in May.