Robotic concepts for urban operations

While land vehicles in open terrains is currently the primary military operation, it is expected that an increasing number of conflicts will occur in urban setting. Urban robots must operate under mobility, communication, perception and control conditions far more demanding than their open terrain counterparts. The Defense Research Establishment Suffield (DRES) is being tasked to develop robots, unmanned vehicles and supports system to aid the Canadian Forces in urban operations. In preparation for this role DRES personnel were invited to participate in operation Urban Ram, a large urban war game held on the grounds of CFB Griesbach in Edmonton. This paper presents the lessons learned at Urban Ram as to what roles robots could fulfill and the challenges of urban environments that must be overcome. Also presented will be robotic concepts inspired by Urban Ram, specifically discussed will be High Utility Robotics (HUR), which combines geometric shape shifting with function morphing to provide the general purpose, high mobility and broad application robots required for urban environments.