Autonomous System for Future Battle Fields
T. Soundara Pandian · 2009
The conflicts between nations has taken a shift from an open confrontation involving conventional defense forces, to a low intensity and indirect attacks, targeting civilian population creating unrest and colossal damages, that can strangulate economic developments and pose a great security concern. The effort to counter the threats from adversaries is of great concern for a developing nation like India. The conventional strategies to defeat, involves considerable manpower, resources, effort and time. To be more successful, it is wiser to gather information about adversary’s strategies that would strength our armed forces for counter action. This has been the concern of many nations. World over many countries have focused their R&D towards meeting this goal. A viable solution that would address the issue is the development of autonomous systems. An autonomous system would be a boon for armed forces both at peace time and at combat time to gather information that would otherwise be difficult to reveal the adversaries strategies. A battle outcome is decisive based on availability of information about the adversary’s strategies. This goes by the following “He who fires first wins the battle” an old saying. “He who knows the adversary’s strategies wins the battle” information age. Configuration of an autonomous system to meet the armed forces requirements is a technological challenge and is the primary focus for any R&D. In isolation many technologies have emerged that may find a potential application in the autonomous system for armed forces. The areas include perception system, artificial muscles, smart materials, 3D trajectory estimation, control, guidance and actuation etc. The presentation primarily focuses on the few selected technology available, the technology to be developed, issues in integrating the technology.