HARV gives soldiers a robot's-eye view

While battlefield robots are certainly plenty capable with their current control systems, the folks at Chatten Associates seem to think they can do things one better, and they're now touting their so-called HARV (Head-Aimed Remote Viewer) system as a potential alternative. That consists of a gimbal-mounted video system on the robot itself, which gets paired with some gyro-equipped goggles that let the robot to look around wherever the soldier moves his head. Of course, they didn't stop things there, with the setup also offering a 36x optical zoom, night vision, and other advantages that Chatten says can improve mission performance by 300% to 400%. As if that wasn't enough, the firm's also now apparently hard at work on an updated system set for delivery to the military next year that'll add a thermal imager, a higher resolution, and a laser rangefinder, among other things they're probably not willing to tell us. Head on over after the break for a video of the system in action.

[Dugas @ Feb 13th 2008 1:34PM]

i'm sure i'd throw up if i used this.

[Matt Sullivan @ Feb 13th 2008 1:43PM]

I want my own military robot: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4249209.html

[Senor_Tom @ Feb 13th 2008 1:44PM]

cool, but does it only detect head movment not eye. Or does it have a wide FOV like we do, do we could look at the sides of the image?

[Grizz @ Feb 13th 2008 1:52PM]

How do you measure 300% improvement in performance?

[Sean @ Feb 13th 2008 2:05PM]

Is that a kid testing the robot?

[Shawn @ Feb 13th 2008 2:24PM]

the "solider" at 2:37 looks like farva

[Wwhat @ Feb 13th 2008 2:37PM]

Now they need to add an AK47 dispenser to automatically put an AK next to the people the army shot/bombed so they can claim they were 'terrorists'!
You have to think in the field for these developments.

[Shaocaholica @ Feb 13th 2008 2:46PM]

Well, hopefully when soldiers don't have to worry about being shot on the battlefield, they'll make much better decisions on who they shoot at. If anything, these human controlled robots will decrease the number of civilian and friendly casualties.

[Wwhat @ Feb 13th 2008 3:46PM]

haha, n1

[Herks @ Feb 13th 2008 5:08PM]

I hope the developers making money off this are giving some credit to other people that have been developing this kind of stuff for well over 5 years.
http://www.uamt.feec.vutbr.cz/robotics/index.html
http://robotarenas.nist.gov/2003_competitions/Robrno%20Awardee%20Paper.pdf
(There are probably other institutions researching this type of thing as well, that I'm not aware of)

[ugg.tryptophan @ Feb 13th 2008 11:13PM]

"Ok HARV now disarm the ied", "Sorry, I can't do that Sgt. Dave", "HARV disarm the IED!", "You are a threat to the mission"

[kevin @ Feb 14th 2008 4:55PM]

bring it to spiral e and we'll see just how well this thing really works

[Russ @ Feb 14th 2008 6:55PM]

oh.. i was hoping for something like terminator vision..

[John @ Feb 14th 2008 10:35PM]

This guy will sell you a system to put on your own robot car for around $2000.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=EmHNgm959vc

http://www.endurance-rc.com/realdriver.html

Amazing... and he's been doing it for at least a year and a half.

John Fenley

[d 1 g77 @ Feb 15th 2008 1:50PM]

@Herks

Get with it dude. That is the way innovation happens. If you seriously believe that the "first" person to design something, is the person that makes the money off of it....you have a great deal to learn.

[k @ Feb 15th 2008 3:00PM]

This is not new at all. This tech has been available for over a year. There are many issues with camera movement speed vs. head movement speed and most people find it uncomfortable and nausea inducing. This article is late. Almost all of those features are currently available on th Talon. Get your game up to date Engadget, this us bush league.

[snazz @ Feb 16th 2008 6:07PM]

I bet they would get better performance out of the soldiers if they added in XBOX360 controller support.