DARPA's Ground X-Vehicle Technologies

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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We have more than our fair share of automotive enthusiasts here among our computer geeks, and of course we like it when we get to see awesome automotive tech intersect with all sorts of high tech advancements. DARPA snuck out this video on Friday that is chock full of all kinds of tech that will surely get your attention.

Check out the video.


DARPA's Ground X-Vehicle Technologies (GXV-T) program aims to improve mobility, survivability, safety, and effectiveness of future combat vehicles without piling on armor. The demonstrations featured here show progress on technologies for traveling quickly over varied terrain and improving situational awareness and ease of operation.
 
That's neat and all, but one major thing is that military equipment should be durable, simple, and easy to fix in the field. Imagine if this breaks in the middle of the desert or jungle?
 
Ummm, its an experimental vehicle.

Of course it's not ready for the field. It's ready to push the tech forward so to develop the stuff that's ready for the field.

Isn't that the point of experimental vehicles?
 
chameleoneel said:
they didn't show us what triangle wheels are good for
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review_damnation-alley.jpg
 
Interested to see who gets to virtual cockpits first. The armed forces or nanny state crash regulations pushing the auto belt line further and further up the side of cars?
 
The Landmaster....*epic*. They need to show these things with a bunch of those Atlas and Dog robots chugging along right next to them....they do that I'll be buying one of those giant USA Glitter Jackets and wearing it everywhere I go, cuz USA! USA! USA!.....
 
Watching the video of the transitional wheels, holy crap did those things bounce the occupants around inside.....they did not look comfortable to ride on. Stability is something that needs to be looked at because a driver would have a really hard time being bounced all over. HMMWVs are all ready bad enough now the wheels cause more bouncing, not cool.
 
bigdogchris said:
That's neat and all, but one major thing is that military equipment should be durable, simple, and easy to fix in the field. Imagine if this breaks in the middle of the desert or jungle?
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Ha. That may go for firearms, but do you know how much maintenance and repair a Humvee requires? Or, god forbid, an F-35? Granted, both of those are kinda problem-child vehicles, but the modern US military is willing to put up with enormous maintenance costs and some level of unreliability from complexity.


That suspension tech will actually help reliability though, as it puts less wear and tear on everything bolted to the chassis when going over rough terrain. That's exactly why modern desert racers have a ton of suspension travel, even if it involves compromises like going 2WD. And it's partially why the Humvee replacement (the JLTV) has a whopping 20" of suspension travel and some active suspension elements already.
 
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Some very interesting tech in there, but most of it isn't for the battlefield. The Army likes to look at people's ideas, and they pay good money to have people develop these ideas even if the ideas aren't really practical for combat. DARPA spends a lot of money on butterflies and unicorns because unpractical ideas makes fertile ground for other, better ideas.


NOTE: The following is some odd philosophical rambling.

Civilians have a lot of mistaken thoughts about warfare. If you can turn your memories back to the 1970's when the M1 Abrams and the M2 Bradley were being designed, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was originally supposed to be able to fight alongside the M1 Abrams tanks, be impervious to current man-packed anti-tank weapons, be able to achieve 45+ MPH speeds, be powered by a small box diesel, and be airlifted by Air Force transports. Because of this, the M2 design specifications had tough weight limitations. To meet the weight requirement the engineers has planned to use magnesium plates and magnesium composites for a lot of the exterior armor (but not for the frame or spall armor.) The problem is, magnesium is flammable, and in testing those armor plates often caught on fire.

When the Senate found out about the flaming armor they shit their pants and wanted to know why the military would buy vehicles that would burn. Eventually the pressure on the Army got so bad that the vehicle was redesigned to use steel, high-strength aluminum and exotic (expensive) composites, and that seems like the right thing to do, but ... the redesigned armor was never as strong or as light as the original design.

In the Army's thinking, the first job of armor is to stop the incoming round, and they're right. If you think about it, there's no value in having armor plate that won't catch on fire if the enemy round penetrates the hull and kills the crew. Equally, if the armor stopped the enemy round but then caught on fire, it still did its job - the crew inside survived. Of course, we'd all like to be in a vehicle that does both - stops enemy rounds, and doesn't catch on fire. And maybe the Bradley has been upgraded to that point. But in any case, the battlefield is a strange and counter-intuitive place, and civilian wisdom doesn't always jibe with military reality.


P.S. The best idea was the one-piece electric hubs, provided they are easy to replace in the field. Yeah, it's a complex part, but if you have six- to eight hubs per armored wheeled-vehicle, and those hubs can be easily replaced as individual units, you've drastically lowered the complexity of your power train and you've removed your dependency on a specific power source. Porsche wanted to do something similar in WWII, but the Germans couldn't get enough copper.
 
brucethemoose said:
Ha. That may go for firearms, but do you know how much maintenance and repair a Humvee requires? Or, god forbid, an F-35? Granted, both of those are kinda problem-child vehicles, but the modern US military is willing to put up with enormous maintenance costs and some level of unreliability from complexity.
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Oh man the ABL (massive laser they put on a Boeing to shoot nuclear warheads down), used to cook part of the optics every few shots.
Fibre lasers have come a long way since then.
 
chameleoneel said:
they didn't show us what triangle wheels are good for
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Increased surface area to enhance grip. Like mentioned in a previous post, this would like be best for areas with loose materials, IE really sandy roads, loose soil, wet surfaces, etc.
 
SomeoneElse said:
Watching the video of the transitional wheels, holy crap did those things bounce the occupants around inside.....they did not look comfortable to ride on. Stability is something that needs to be looked at because a driver would have a really hard time being bounced all over. HMMWVs are all ready bad enough now the wheels cause more bouncing, not cool.
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It depends on what you would rather happen, have a bouncy ride, or get stuck in the middle of the road during a firefight...
 
NoOther said:
It depends on what you would rather happen, have a bouncy ride, or get stuck in the middle of the road during a firefight...
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Considering there wasn't a huge amount of firefights with convoys. The ability to keep control of yourself and the vehicle at the same time is a big deal. Trust me keeping control of the vehicle should be top priority and you can't do that while being bounced around in the cockpit.
 
SomeoneElse said:
Considering there wasn't a huge amount of firefights with convoys. The ability to keep control of yourself and the vehicle at the same time is a big deal. Trust me keeping control of the vehicle should be top priority and you can't do that while being bounced around in the cockpit.
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"huge amount" of firefights is a relative term. I personally know a dozen incidents of convoys being ambushed. My nephew was involved in one of those. As for the bouncing around in the cockpit, yes that is a factor, but it is far easier to operate a mobile vehicle while bouncing around than a stuck vehicle while sitting comfortably...

I am all too aware of the "bouncing" around as a few of my projects have dealt with putting intricate systems into mobile military vehicles, mostly Humvees and variants.
 
NoOther said:
"huge amount" of firefights is a relative term. I personally know a dozen incidents of convoys being ambushed. My nephew was involved in one of those. As for the bouncing around in the cockpit, yes that is a factor, but it is far easier to operate a mobile vehicle while bouncing around than a stuck vehicle while sitting comfortably...

I am all too aware of the "bouncing" around as a few of my projects have dealt with putting intricate systems into mobile military vehicles, mostly Humvees and variants.
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I see what you are saying and have been a driver for the Supply officer while i was in the Army i know that they have some shock absorbing seats to reduce the amount of motion on the driver. The wheels look to be more for transition between pavement and soft ground. They still need to look at it.
Have you ever seen the Mythbusters episode on round wheels versus square wheels? Its pretty crazy, this just isn't that extreme.
 
SomeoneElse said:
I see what you are saying and have been a driver for the Supply officer while i was in the Army i know that they have some shock absorbing seats to reduce the amount of motion on the driver. The wheels look to be more for transition between pavement and soft ground. They still need to look at it.
Have you ever seen the Mythbusters episode on round wheels versus square wheels? Its pretty crazy, this just isn't that extreme.
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I am not sure what you are getting at there since this isn't round verse triangle. The wheels operate differently in the modes. While in the triangle formation they are tracks, not typical wheels. Did you even watch the video?
 
NoOther said:
I am not sure what you are getting at there since this isn't round verse triangle. The wheels operate differently in the modes. While in the triangle formation they are tracks, not typical wheels. Did you even watch the video?
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I did watch, did you not see when it transitions from triangle to round that the "round" wheel was not totally round and was pretty rough when normal driving.....watch it again.
2:24-2:49 watch the back end bound while its in round wheel mode.....it had alot of unneeded bounce. That's not due to the tread either.
 
SomeoneElse said:
I did watch, did you not see when it transitions from triangle to round that the "round" wheel was not totally round and was pretty rough when normal driving.....watch it again.
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I did see, but this is a far cry from the round vs square wheel. These are also prototypes showing the possible capabilities.
 
NoOther said:
I did see, but this is a far cry from the round vs square wheel. These are also prototypes showing the possible capabilities.
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Which is why I said what I did about fixing the issue. I also said it wasn't as extreme as the round versus square wheels....
 
Round doesn't mean that it is a wheel in the same sense as a tire. It is simply changing the track's geometry to become round and then locks the track and let's the entire structure turns instead of just the track. What's missing from this "round" config is all the dampening and shock absorption a true pneumatic tire would provide. In this config over rough terrain at speed, it would basically just smash itself to smithereens in short order. While a novel and cool display of engineering prowess, this isn't all that practical due to its weight and complexity, not to mention cost... And while it might be able to enhance traction, it simply does nothing to enhance suspension capabilities as everything is just transmitted right through the hub to what little frame suspension/damping there is. For a slow vehicle, it could work, but most battlefield requirement specs don't go gunning for a "slow" solution.
 
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NoOther said:
It depends on what you would rather happen, have a bouncy ride, or get stuck in the middle of the road during a firefight...
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SomeoneElse said:
I see what you are saying and have been a driver for the Supply officer while i was in the Army i know that they have some shock absorbing seats to reduce the amount of motion on the driver. The wheels look to be more for transition between pavement and soft ground. They still need to look at it.
Have you ever seen the Mythbusters episode on round wheels versus square wheels? Its pretty crazy, this just isn't that extreme.
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This all sounds like a suspension problem too.

The Humvees are ancient designs, hence they're notorious for having rough rides compared to more modern off-road vehicles. I bet if you slapped those wheels on a JLTV instead, the ride would be better than a Humvee with standard tires.
 
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