High Velocity Tele-Operated Rover

The High Velocity Tele-operated Rover, HVTR, is motivated by a goal to exceed human physical speed with small ground vehicles for operations in urban environment. A typical small (man-packable) ground vehicle's speed tops out at 1-2 m/sec (2-4 mph). Limited speed is attributed to real-time sensing and processing of the external environment. Low speed makes traversing multiple city blocks taxing on the patience of a human operator. Traversing around a block may take 10-20 minutes. Even with operator assistance using video does not significantly increase the speed. This is due to the low perspective of the camera view and camera vibration in outdoor setting. To increase the speed capability of a small rover, a paradigm shift is proposed. Before a mission in an urban environment, the rover system is equipped with available pre-mission data. This includes overhead images and roadmaps of the mission area. The features of this system include: high speed rover operation; intuitive operator interface for tele-operation; night time operation; operation through obscurants (such as smoke screens); GPS useful but not necessary; low bandwidth communication; long range reconnaissance in urban environments.