<title>Intelligent autonomy for small throwable land robots</title>

Abstract

DARPA's Tactical Mobile Robot program includes a Throwable Robot (Throwbot) designed to be thrown into buildings, then teleoperated for surveillance purposes. Use by ground troops imposes significant size and weight limits, as does the requirement that it survive ballistic delivery. The current program stresses the state of the art in robotics and packaging, but further challenges exist. Future Throwbots would benefit from significant increases in autonomy, to deal with RF communication difficulties in buildings and to allow simultaneous operation of multiple vehicles by one person. This paper describes both currently planned and advanced autonomous capabilities.