Rheinmetall has detailed the recent successes it had participating in the recent European Land Robot Trial 2024 (ELROB) competition, which took place from 24 to 28 June at the German Armed Forces Technical Center for Land-Based Vehicle Systems, Engineer and General Field Equipment (WTD 41) in Trier.
Most notably, the company’s Interoperable Robotic Convoy (InterRoC) team, consisting of the Research & Technology division of Rheinmetall Landsysteme and Rheinmetall Canada, won first prize in the competition’s ‘Automated Convoy’ category.
For this the Rheinmetall used the combination of HX truck with the company’s PATH Autonomy Kit (PATH A-kit). The latter is an AI-supported navigation system that can be installed in almost any vehicle and has already proven itself in trials with various platforms, including in the Mission Master robotic vehicle family.
At ELROB 2024 the PATH A-kit controlled two HX trucks as part of the convoy scenario. Both HX vehicles were also equipped with a drive-by-wire system.
Over the course of a 6 km circuit the HX vehicles had to overcome 11 different obstacles. The most difficult challenges included narrow paths, transitions between on-road and off-road driving, navigating through open and dense forests, communication interference, reversing and driving around obstacles.
“The course was very challenging. The organisers did a fantastic job of making the competition a realistic military scenario and our performance shows that the Rheinmetall PATH A-kit is ready for real-world use cases,” Paul Rocco, managing director of Rheinmetall Provectus (a company acquired by Rheinmetall Canada in 2019), was quoted as saying in a Rheinmetall press release.
The competition organisers also surprised the Rheinmetall team by bringing a car into their convoy. This forced the following truck to slow down and navigate around the moving obstacle. The convoy was also broken up, so the team had to remotely control the following truck on a parallel path and reconfigure the convoy to make the remote-controlled truck the new convoy leader.
“The 2024 ELROB scenario was considerably more challenging than the scenario for the 2022 ELROB participation, for example,” commented Sebastian Elze, Rheinmetall Landsysteme Research & Technology division’s project manager responsible for the overall autonomous InterRoC system. Despite these challenges, the team completed most of the route in convoy mode without GPS, including through terrain overgrown with dense foliage.
“This is the first time we have demonstrated this new specific capability, which is a significant upgrade for the PATH A-kit,” said Luc Brunet, Director of Robotics and Autonomous Systems at Rheinmetall Provectus. “We were able to seamlessly switch between GPS-enabled and GPS-free environments without any degradation in functionality or noticeable change in operation.”
ELROB is one of the most demanding open international competitions in the field of robotics, sensor technology and autonomy. Every two years, participants from universities as well as civilian and military manufacturers compete against each other to test the capabilities of modern robots, with 19 teams taking part in ELROB 2024.
Alongside the competitive aspect of the trials, the technology at ELROB 2024 was also demonstrated to the trial’s many visitors, who included including generals and other military personnel from various countries as well as officials from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Defence, Federal Office of Bundeswehr Information Technology and In-Service Support (BAAINBw) and WTD41.
The InterRoC project was launched four years ago in order to derive customer requirements for future autonomous logistics vehicles. It is continuously being expanded by the BAAINBw through supplementary orders with regard to system capabilities.
