Pa. Guard drone team participates in DEVCOM’s Robotics and Autonomy Showcase
FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. – Two Soldiers from the Pennsylvania National Guard’s Unmanned Aircraft System Training and Innovation Facility participated in U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Robotics and Autonomy Showcase Aug. 27.
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Nathan Shea and Sgt. 1st Class Brent Wehr traveled to the Army Research Laboratory’s Robotics Research Collaboration Campus at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, for the event, which showcased several cutting-edge projects.
Shea and Wehr demonstrated the latest version of their Project Recovery Exploitation Drone, or Project R.E.D., which won the innovation category at the U.S. Army’s first-ever Best Drone Warfighter Competition in February.
Since winning the competition, the UASTIF has collaborated with the ARL to improve Project R.E.D. During the showcase, Shea, Wehr and their ARL scientist partners presented the improved Project R.E.D. to leaders from military and civilian government agencies, elected officials, academia and industry.
“I’m hopeful that through the military leaders, civilian government agencies, elected officials, academia and industry partners present we will see the demand signal to hand this project off for its next phase of development,” said Shea, the UASTIF’s officer in charge. “I believe the team did an outstanding job at shaping the problem set we developed this project to tackle.
“Additionally, I believe we covered the challenges it faces in its current configuration and how we’ve outlined the roadmap to overcome them and be the solution EOD needs,” Shea added.
Project R.E.D. uses a custom designed and built small UAS with a robotic arm to enable service members to safely recover downed adversary or friendly drones for intelligence exploitation or repair.
Collaboration with ARL improved autonomous flight characteristics, increased on-board AI-enabled video capture frame rate, lightened and strengthened the landing legs and simplified electrical wiring.
Shea said just being able to attend the event was a fantastic experience for him and Wehr.
“We got to meet a bunch of ARL teams from their Robotics and Autonomy Division that have been developing a variety of projects and solutions to some core problems sets within the Army,” Shea said. “I’d say it helped us have a greater understanding of how these engineers look at and scope large problem sets that are presented to them from the Army.”
Additionally, Shea said, he and Wehr made numerous new connections to assist in the development of projects and research at the UASTIF.
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