Bridging the Gap in Military Robotics (Combler le Fosse Existant dans le Domaine de la Robotique Militaire)

摘要

There appears to exist a gap between the ideas of the military on the use of ground robotics for their purposes and the technical possibilities offered by industry and research. In many cases the military are offered robots created by industry, but to a lesser degree robots developed to explicitly meet military needs. To bridge this gap, a NATO workshop was organised September 2004 in Bonn, attended by over 70 participants from the military, industry, research and ministries from 16 different mainly European countries. The starting point for the workshop was defining the tasks for which the military would most like to use robots by the year 2008, including the functional requirements. In parallel, the industry and researchers defined the current status of robotics technology and the level of technology that is expected to be achieved by the year 2008 at the current rate of technology development. Based on the differences between military needs on one hand and the expected level of technology by 2008 on the other hand, roadmaps were constructed. These roadmaps identify which actions should be taken in order to achieve the required level of technology by 2008, if at all possible. They also identify who should take action and how this should be organised. It was recognised during the workshop that this is the first time that this type of analysis on the gap between user requirements and technical possibilities has been attempted.