Model military vehicles, left foreground, use tiny cameras to explore streets in a model Iraqi city.
	Want to know more? Florian Jentsch 407-384-2091 fjentsch@ucf.edu TPL Lab Website

by Chad Binette (cbinette@mail.ucf.edu)

ORLANDO, Aug. 31, 2004 - A miniature city built to resemble An Najaf with toy soldiers, GI Joe military trucks and palm trees made out of pipe cleaners is the setting for a University of Central Florida research project aimed at helping the Army rely more on unmanned vehicles during wars.

UCF researchers are beginning to study how well students navigate remote-controlled trucks through a war-like environment, avoiding dangerous situations and recognizing friends from foes. The students, including many Army ROTC cadets, sit in a room next to the "city" and watch a television screen with images from cameras mounted on the remote-controlled trucks they are controlling.

In some of the experiments, students try to control two or more vehicles at once in an effort to determine whether one soldier can effectively operate more than one unmanned tank delivering supplies or scoping out enemy hideouts. The Army also wants to learn more about how much confidence people have in working with robots.

UCF's research is focused on learning more about how humans and robots interact at a time when the military wants to use more robotic air and ground vehicles to make operations safer and more effective during wars. Other universities are helping the military by designing and testing robotic software and hardware.

The UCF findings will help the Army figure out the best way to train soldiers to work with robots in the battlefield, said Neal Finkelstein, deputy director of the Army's Simulation & Training Technology Center. The center is located in the Central Florida Research Park, which is adjacent to UCF's Orlando campus.

"Whether you are using a $100,000 robot or a $5 robot, when you are learning about span of control or how a soldier in a tank can hand off control to a soldier on the ground, the use of low-cost tools may be good enough," Finkelstein said. "We may find that we may need to upgrade to some of the more expensive robots we have in the area. But, for now, we think this might provide us with some golden nuggets of research at a low cost."

The UCF students try to drive through the two- by three-block city without damaging buildings and avoiding "fire" from insurgents in houses or alleys. Different levels of light simulate daytime and nighttime exercises, and some of the city's pieces are changed between experiments, so a civilian holding an anti-United States sign in one exercise could be a friend of the United States the following time.

Florian Jentsch, director of the UCF Team Performance Laboratory and the project's lead researcher, has spent about $3,500 on materials for the city, which takes up an entire room. Many of the items, such as the pipe cleaners and toy construction workers repainted to look like civilians, were purchased at department stores. Jentsch bought some military vehicles on eBay. He and a few students painted and built the homes, trees and other parts of the city in their spare time.

The total cost of the research project, funded by the Army Research Office and Army Research Development & Engineering Command, is about $87,000. It would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more to update computer simulation programs to handle the experiments, Jentsch said, and it's also more lifelike for the students to be using actual remote-controlled vehicles.

"We are doing something here that gives us elements of realism at an incredibly low price and that is scientifically valid," Jentsch said.

Jentsch plans to present his research at the Army Science Conference, which will be held Nov. 29 to Dec. 2 in Orlando.