Two Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition (RSTA) oriented Unmanned Ground Vehicle projects were undertaken at the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC, now SSC San Diego) in the early 1980s under the auspices of the U.S. Marine Corps' Exploratory Development (6.2) Surveillance Program: The Ground Surveillance Robot (GSR) at NOSC in San Diego, and the Advanced Teleoperator Technology (ATT) Teleoperated Dune Buggy at NOSC's Hawaii detachment. A third element of this 6.2 program was the Airborn Remotely Operated Device (AROD), a small ducted-fan UAV whose successor, the Air-Mobile Ground Security Surveillance System (AMGSSS), is a ducted-fan vehicle deployed for ground-based RSTA.
The ATT teleoperated dune buggy concentrated exclusively on teleoperator control methodology and on "advanced, spatially-correspondent multi-sensory human/machine interfaces." With two Chenowth dune buggies as testbed vehicles, the ATT project successfully demonstrated the feasibility of utilizing remotely operated ground vehicles to transit complex natural terrain and to control vehicle-mounted weapon systems. In addition, the ATT effort demonstrated the efficacy of stereo head-coupled visual display systems, binaural audio feedback, and isomorphic vehicle controls for high-speed remote vehicle operations.
1.4 MB MPEG movie.
Individual segments: dune buggy with machine gun (900 KB*), teleoperation (930 KB), and another dune buggy (870 KB*).
Segments with * used lower compression (higher quality).
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Last update: 19 February 1998.