MoD Announces Winner Of Robot Challenge
Guardian Unlimited (UK) (08/19/08) Randerson, James

The U.K. Ministry of Defense has announced a winner in its Grand Challenge contest, which aims to find the best robotic air and ground vehicles for threat identification purposes. The winning technology was developed by Team Stellar, a collection of small companies, large industrial manufacturers, and Cranfield University researchers. Various contest teams competed for three days at a mocked-up German village in England that the army uses for training. Among the entrants were quadropters, a miniature flying saucer, and Team Stellar's winning combination of flying craft and a miniature tank. The mission of the robots was to detect snipers, enemy patrols, improvised explosive devices, and vehicles with heavy weapons mounted on them. They were given an hour each to find these around the mock village, and Team Stellar responded to the challenge by deploying a high-altitude 7-kilogram robotic plane to map the village, 1.8-kilogram robots to fly between buildings and take ther mal and video images, and a roving mini-tank for detailed reconnaissance. After receiving mission instructions, the vehicles were able to plot their own courses and make their way around objects, while their imagery was streamed to a ground station where they were analyzed by software for potential threats. Team Stellar won the RJ Mitchell Trophy, which is named after the Spitfire's designer, and future work could allow the technology to be available to the army within 18 months.
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