STELLAR - SATURN
The Stellar team's Grand Challenge entry, SATURN (short for Sensing & Autonomous Tactical Urban Reconnaissance Network), took the top prize in yesterday's MoD competition: Of the entries, it was the most successful at identifying threats and relaying them back to the team. This doesn't mean that Stellar will automatically get a contract with the British Armed Forces, but the MoD will consider it for incorporation into its future frontline kit, along with successful elements from other teams' entries.
In many ways SATURN is something out of a sci-fi nightmare: Swarms of mindless drones buzz through densely populated cities and towns and report back to a centralized computer that analyzes the situation and feeds back commands. In the case of Team Stellar, its Ground Control Station (GCS) consists of a laptop that processes image data from a combination of unmanned ground and air vehicles.
According to Julia Richardson, director of Stellar Research Services and head of the multi-organization team, the GCS hosts two software suites. The Autonomous Threat Detection software looks at incoming footage from the single UGV and multiple UAVs and picks out threats. It then indicates the location of each threat on an overhead map, which is displayed on the laptop screen.
"Meanwhile, the IP [Intelligent Processing] software decides which platforms should be sent where, and then provides them with the commands and routes, via GCS waypoints," says Richardson. Instead of relying on GPS data, Stellar's hivemind-like SATURN system plans routes based on aerial imagery, collected in advance by satellites or UAVs.
Stellar's UAVs may not be in the British army's immediate future, but their success in the Grand Challenge means that the technology is hardly science fiction.
In many ways SATURN is something out of a sci-fi nightmare: Swarms of mindless drones buzz through densely populated cities and towns and report back to a centralized computer that analyzes the situation and feeds back commands. In the case of Team Stellar, its Ground Control Station (GCS) consists of a laptop that processes image data from a combination of unmanned ground and air vehicles.
According to Julia Richardson, director of Stellar Research Services and head of the multi-organization team, the GCS hosts two software suites. The Autonomous Threat Detection software looks at incoming footage from the single UGV and multiple UAVs and picks out threats. It then indicates the location of each threat on an overhead map, which is displayed on the laptop screen.
"Meanwhile, the IP [Intelligent Processing] software decides which platforms should be sent where, and then provides them with the commands and routes, via GCS waypoints," says Richardson. Instead of relying on GPS data, Stellar's hivemind-like SATURN system plans routes based on aerial imagery, collected in advance by satellites or UAVs.
Stellar's UAVs may not be in the British army's immediate future, but their success in the Grand Challenge means that the technology is hardly science fiction.
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