Defense Tech: Cat Food Boxes = Army Training Ground


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Edited by Christian Lowe \| Contact

Cat Food Boxes = Army Training Ground

Forget all those high-end computer graphics and mock Arab villages, writes Michael Peck in Training & Simulation Journal. One Army-funded researcher is using cat-food boxes and toy soldiers to test out how troops interact with military robots.

The project began in 2004 when the Army requested a study of human-robot interactions using multiple robots and multiple operators, said Florian Jentsch, director of UCF’s Team Performance Laboratory. The goal was to test factors such as the number of UGVs [unmanned ground vehicles] that an operator could control.

Although computer simulations are fashionable in the defense world, Jentsch realized that miniature vehicles and mock terrain had their advantages. For one, while a computer game might not be pricey, modifying it to test UGVs would costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. For another, adding civilian vehicles to computer simulations can be complicated. "But I can buy a 1/32-scale tractor-trailer for 12 bucks," Jentsch said.

Computer games also suffer from problems simulating physics; vehicles can often drive straight through buildings without a scratch or bounce off a virtual wall...

Using an initial $87,000 grant from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Jentsch’s team created a roughly 1/35th-scale Iraqi city. The scale military operations on urban terrain (MOUT) facility measures 26 feet by 30 feet, with most buildings about a foot high. It represents a 14-acre section of city divided into four areas: one with high-rise buildings, another with a market, a third representing a residential area, and a city perimeter with palm groves and open desert.

"Through the clever use of visual obstructions, such as walls, palm groves and building facades, we can create linear run distances of more than [simulated] 4.8 kilometers in length, without the vehicle having to traverse the same spot or see the same location twice," Jentsch said.

The initial setup took about six months and cost about $5,000 for cameras, transmitters, toy soldiers, miniature ferns and pipe cleaners to be transformed into palm trees. Buildings were made from cat food boxes.

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Posted by: stanlly at February 12, 2009 10:08 PM

I like it. Don't criticize this because it seems silly. Developement of 3D environment video games, such as "Half Life" runs in the 10's of mill.

One idea, why not take this back to the video game world? Using Epcot Center type fake building technology, online games could hire starving 3rd worlders for a literal avatar! Slap a camera on their heads and some sort of shock mechanism that responds to your mouse of course.

Or, better yet, see article for 'remote control humans' on newscientist.com. A painless helmet -- no drilling required.

Posted by: Guest at June 19, 2006 11:09 AM

Hmmmm...anybody else remindered of how they made the old 60s-era Godzilla films?

Posted by: Bosda at June 19, 2006 07:39 AM

$87,000?! WTF!

Posted by: Concern Citizen at June 16, 2006 09:06 PM

What did they do with all the cat food?

Posted by: Jesus at June 16, 2006 05:27 PM

Sure: buy a couple of inner tubes (kids' bikes or mountain bikes, racing bikes are too slender), inflate them about halfway, and lay them down between a heavy table and a heavy flat slab (such as a granite lab bench). I don't promise it's as good as the fancy one, but at least you won't have to start over every time someone walks past your table. We got pretty good results, except the day we had a ~4 Richter earthquake :)

Posted by: Haninah at June 16, 2006 01:20 PM

I've actually been to that facility and walked around the 'city'. It's impressive to say the least. I used to work for Florida Space Institute, and we were down the hall from the city room. Hey haninah, got any instructions on how to make that vibe-free optical bed? ;)

Posted by: Dan at June 16, 2006 12:45 PM

Cat Food Boxes? Why not use Lego? :-D

I remember driving my vehicle through an enemy submarine in a war game, seeing the empty skelton of the polygon elements of the enemy submarine. I also had portion of body penetrating the wall. Very wierd things happen in 3D computer games for sure.

Posted by: pedestrian at June 16, 2006 11:59 AM

One of the lessons which laboratory science has taught me is that improvisation is the true proving-ground of genius (a fancy vibration-free optical bench is nice, but you'd better know how to build your own out of bicycle inner tubes if the fancy one breaks). I'm glad for further proof that the spirit of genius is not dead in our military.

Posted by: Haninah at June 16, 2006 11:08 AM

Cat Food Boxes = Army Training Ground

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