The Construction Equipment Robot Kit (CERK) Warfighter Experiment was conducted March 17-28, 2008 at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri to assess if robotic construction equipment systems are an operationally effective and suitable means to support hasty route clearance and route remediation operations. This paper will present the findings of the Soldier testing of two different common-off-the-self (COTS) robotic kits installed on two different pieces of field construction equipment through a variety of operational vignettes. These vignettes were preformed during both day and night operations, with and without all weather gear on by Soldiers that are experienced operators of construction equipment. This paper will go into detailed analysis of the communications systems used between the robots and their operator control units (OCU) and the need to improve communications of both robotic kits. The results will show that these operations are possible to accomplish while removing the Soldier from harms way.

Date Published: 19 January 2009
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 7252, Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXVI: Algorithms and Techniques, 72520J (19 January 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.805995

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7252:
Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXVI: Algorithms and Techniques
David P. Casasent; Ernest L. Hall; Juha Röning, Editor(s)