Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Army have demonstrated the autonomous deployment of an unmanned ground vehicle by an unmanned aircraft, Aviation Week is reporting.
More from the article:
The test, at Fort Benning in Georgia, involved the Lockheed/Kaman K-Max unmanned helicopter airlifting Lockheed’s Squad Mission Support System (SMSS) vehicle into position to conduct an autonomous resupply and reconnaissance mission.
Both the SMSS and the K-Max communicated with a remote operations center beyond-line-of-sight via satellite communications during the exercise. A Lockheed Gyrocam electro-optical/infrared sensor on the SMSS operated throughout the mission, including inflight.
The demo simulated the resupply of a village. The wheeled SMSS was manually hooked to the K-Max as a sling load and airlifted to the landing zone, where it was automatically released to begin its mission. At the resupply point, the SMSS was shut down and unloaded.
Full story here:
http://aviationweek.com/military-government/unmanned-k-max-operates-unmanned-ground-vehicle
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