The Combat Medic program is developing the technology for a fully-autonomous casualty extraction mission.  Given the GPS location of a casualty, the system will be capable of safely arriving at the scene with no prior maps of terrain, finding a landing zone near the casualty, automated approach and landing, and subsequent extraction to a medical facility.

This system combines obstacle avoidance with landing zone selection for a complete autonomous mission to land in unknown terrain.

The custom-made LADAR perception system is the best in its class, capable of wire detection, dust penetration, full-waveform analysis, and adjustable field of regard for either obstacle detection or terrain mapping.  It is coupled to an INS system to create high-resolution maps in the global coordinate frame.

We are currently in the flight test phase on a large unmanned helicopter platform.

Movies:

Below are links to short videos showing our sensor being tested on a surrogate Humvee vehicle prior to mounting on the helicopter:

  Static Scans (vehicle is stationary)

  Dynamic Scans (vehicle is driving)

  Static Scan with Foliage Penetration

  Obscurant Penetration (smoke)