US bids to turn scooters into 'robot soldiers'

The Pentagon is revving up a two-wheeled scooter in a plan to develop battlefield robots that think for themselves and communicate with troops.

The Segway Human Transporter programme is still in the research phase, so the self-balancing scooters are not expected to report to boot camp just yet.

Up to now, university researchers armed with Pentagon funding have programmed Segway robots that can open doors, avoid obstacles, and chase soccer balls – all without human control.

Researchers say potential applications for the robots include performing search missions on the battlefield, transporting injured soldiers to safety, or following humans around while hauling their gear.

Dean Kamen, the Segway’s inventor, told The Associated Press he had no qualms about enlisting his brainchild into the military.

“You build a car and it can either be used as an ambulance, or it can drive your troops around,” he said. “My personal reason for liking [this programme] is we would love to get more Segways at universities. The more we have our technology among the tech world, particularly the young geeks, it could only help us.”

Any useful applications developed by universities could help kickstart badly-needed sales for the fledgling scooter company.

When the scooters were unveiled with great fanfare in 2001, Kamen’s supporters predicted millions would be sold, transforming urban transportation. But in September, when the company issued a voluntary recall to fix a problem that caused riders to fall off when the batteries ran low, it was disclosed that only 6,000 Segways had been sold.

Since the Segways retail for €3,700 and €4,250, depending on the model, new sales to the government or any other big customer could “help lower the price and let more people afford it”, said John Morrell, chief development engineer for privately held Segway LLC.

So far, the military programme involves 15 Segways, which were delivered to university and government research labs over the last few months. The project is funded as part of a programme in which the Pentagon is spending €24.1m this year to develop software for autonomous systems.

Jan Walker, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, said the idea was to let researchers concentrate on what the agency calls Mobile Autonomous Robot Software, rather than the mode of transportation. The Segway, which uses gyroscopes to balance itself, provides a common platform on which researchers can swap open-source programmes.

“One of the focuses of this program is to develop software that would allow the robotic system to learn, so it can better perceive its outside environment,” Walker said.

The Segway can make much tighter turns than four-wheeled robotic vehicles currently used in the military and by researchers, and its high centre of gravity means cameras and sensors can be placed several feet above the ground - a height more suitable for interacting with humans.

The scooters were modified by software engineers at Segway so they could be controlled by laptop computers. The researchers then loaded them up with cameras, sensors, communications gear and other gadgets.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology built a Segway robot that could navigate hallways and open doors.

At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Segways are being used as part of a lab’s efforts to build robots that can play soccer with humans. So far, the robot can chase an orange soccer ball and kick it. The next goal is to teach the robot the rules of the game and get it to communicate with human players.

“They will come together, not as a master-slave relationship, with the human telling the robot what to do,”, said computer science professor Manuela Veloso. “The human and robot will be part of the same task.”

University of Southern California researchers are working on ways to get the Segway to act as a “mule” that follows humans around, carrying their gear. The robotic Segway hauls as much as seven stone.

Another USC project involves controlling the way the Segway pitches and bounces over rough terrain so it can carry sensitive cargo, perhaps an injured human.