Delivery Robots Begin to Look Real

On university and business campuses, getting lunch and dinner is becoming a lot easier as robot delivery units hit the pathways.

 As reported by GPS World: If you were a student or faculty member at the University of Wisconsin – Madison campus (UW) during the 2020 COVID lockdown, you might have experienced a novel way to reduce contact with others when ordering a meal. People on campus could avoid a trip to the store and interaction with a delivery person. They could place an order on a special app, and a Starship Technologies robot would pick up and deliver their food.

Of course, for a student, technology that saves a trip to the store, especially anytime of the day or night, would be popular.

From demo to full production

At first, the meal-delivery robots at UW and other campuses were a demonstration to showcase how useful the small bots could be.

But after I soaked up robot-tech news from all over, I learned these little guys have found their way into towns, cities and campuses around the world: specifically, the United States, United Kingdom,  Estonia, Germany and Denmark.

With 1,500 bots working every day, the demonstration phase is long over, and Starship robots are full production. Starship, based in San Francisco, has been in operation since 2014. Its robots now make more than 1,000 deliveries each day. They have made more than 2.5 million deliveries to date, and make 100,000 road-crossings each day.

In the United States alone, 16 states have approved delivery robots, including Virginia, Idaho, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Utah, Arizona, Washington and Texas. At UW, three Starship employees manage maintenance and recover units if they get stuck (while autonomous, the bots need help every now and then).

To have a robot come to visit, UW users download the Starship Food Delivery app, select from a local store menu, pay and then indicate on a map exactly where the bot should deliver the order. The robot collects a minimal $2 delivery charge, which goes toward the $2,000 to $3,000 cost of the vehicle and its operation. (According to Starship, each unit costs the equivalent of a high-end laptop.)

The unit uses GNSS and computer vision to navigate detailed, stored maps. The on-site employees take the robots out on particular routes for their first test runs, and the bot learns each route. The on-board system also uses 12 cameras, ultrasonic sensors, radars and neural networks to form a collision-avoidance net around the vehicle. In this way, pedestrians, dogs and road vehicles (when the robots cross a road) can all be avoided.

When waiting to cross a road, the robot’s safety systems might prevent it from moving. In this case, the device will “phone home” for a support person come out and fix the issue.

What could go wrong?

So far, the robots have been welcomed on the university and industry campuses where they operate. People walk round them as they go about their business. Even better, students and other users have pulled the units out of snow mounds and other hang-ups, returning them to the sidewalk or making other small adjustments to send the bots on their way.

And no one has stolen a unit. That could be because a loud siren erupts if they are picked up.  Presumably the units are programmed to remain within the bounds of their rigorously mapped environments. In any event, the food compartment remains locked until the order is removed by the customer.

Disrupting Doordash

Will robots disrupt today’s car-based delivery services, such as UberEats, Grubhub or DoorDash? Only for the last-mile section of a delivery. In a pinch, Starship robots can travel as far as three miles from their base. As the bots take on more territory, the auto-based delivery companies may be pushed toward the longer routes.

Deliveries such as time-sensitive medical materials could benefit from robotic short-distance, small-package carriers. Other robot delivery services, including Amazon Scout and Roxo, the FedEX SameDay Bot, are also making waves as testing progresses toward last-mile delivery automation from warehouse hubs to customer homes.

Federal, state and local laws may need to be enhanced to allow these autonomous delivery robots to progress toward widespread deployment.

One selling point: Fast robot deliveries lead to fewer delivery trucks, reducing traffic congestion and lowering exhaust pollution. We might have to wait awhile to realize these benefits.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict Prompted U.S. to Develop Autonomous Drone Swarms, 1,000-Mile Cannon

 

As reported by Scientific American: When Russia annexed Crimea and meddled in Ukraine’s Donets Basin, or Donbas, region in 2014, its military revealed new technology, organization and tactics—and upended much of the U.S. military’s thinking about modern warfare. Now, as Moscow keeps U.S. and European leaders guessing about whether it will invade Ukraine again, the Pentagon is pushing forward with projects that reflect priorities set after the onset of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Technologies currently in development include futuristic-sounding projects such as swarms of autonomous drones and a supercannon that can fire a projectile to a distance of 1,000 miles. And perhaps the most staggeringly ambitious campaign aims to combine existing radar and communications with state-of-the-art cloud computing and artificial intelligence in order to create an automated system that coordinates operations across multiple combat areas.

Technologies currently in development include futuristic-sounding projects such as swarms of autonomous drones and a supercannon that can fire a projectile to a distance of 1,000 miles. And perhaps the most staggeringly ambitious campaign aims to combine existing radar and communications with state-of-the-art cloud computing and artificial intelligence in order to create an automated system that coordinates operations across multiple combat areas.

“We are at an inflection point, and we have strategic competitors that are out there that have large militaries,” says General James McConville, chief of staff of the U.S. Army. He notes that the U.S. military has focused on counterterror operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. But a potential fight against Russia—or China, which the Pentagon now regards as the U.S. military’s preeminent threat—would require it to shift focus to a different set of technologies. “In order to deter strategic competitors,” McConville says, “we need to be able to do large-scale combat operations.”

MULTIDOMAIN OPERATIONS

“We are at an inflection point, and we have strategic competitors that are out there that have large militaries,” says General James McConville, chief of staff of the U.S. Army. He notes that the U.S. military has focused on counterterror operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. But a potential fight against Russia—or China, which the Pentagon now regards as the U.S. military’s preeminent threat—would require it to shift focus to a different set of technologies. “In order to deter strategic competitors,” McConville says, “we need to be able to do large-scale combat operations.”

This technology project would quickly coordinate combat across multiple fronts. Much like the way a ride-sharing app combines data on location, distance and travel time to determine the best match for a specific driver and passenger, JADC2 aims to pool all U.S. military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in a data cloud and to use artificial intelligence and algorithms to match the best weapon against a given target. This coordination would ideally integrate the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines into a single fighting force, within which any sensor could connect with any shooter. For instance, if the radar equipment on an F-16 fighter jet spotted an enemy target, and JADC2 determined that a submarine was best positioned to take the shot with a land-attack cruise missile, then that calculus—which might currently take hours or days to coordinate across the air and maritime domains—could be executed in near real time.

“This spring’s prospect of a major Russian attack on Ukraine may give us a case study of what high-end, multidomain attack looks like,” says Melanie Marlowe, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The combination of [uncrewed aerial vehicles], missiles, electronic attack and various ground forces will be a huge challenge.” The idea is that a capability such as JADC2 could tackle that challenge by helping U.S. forces and their allies simultaneously stage attacks across multiple domains, including land, maritime, air, space, cyberspace and electronic warfare. This would hopefully present a closely matched adversary, such as Russia or China, with new dilemmas at a pace it cannot match. “What we look for is speed, range and convergence in our systems so we will have overmatch,” McConville says, using a Pentagon term for dominance. “We are looking for an edge, looking for an advantage, and we’re doing it working together ... as a combined force with allies and partners.”

SWARMING DRONES

Earlier this month the Pentagon unveiled new priorities that aim to drive innovation in 14 “critical technology” areas. Among the key fields are artificial intelligence and autonomy because science and research in such categories are needed to support weapon systems for fighting over well-defended territory: swarms of drones.

In order to penetrate highly defended and contested environments, such as those the U.S. military would face if fighting China or Russia, Washington, D.C., would need a specific set of technologies, says Heidi Shyu, U.S. undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. Shyu says that when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin asked her, in an initial meeting last year, what those technologies would be, she responded, “Make sure that we penetrate with attritable, low-cost unmanned systems.” (Attritable systems are designed to have a limited life: these drone swarms would be deployed with the assumption that they would not return.) “To be able to do that, I believe that we need trusted AI and trusted autonomy to be able to operate without GPS,” Shyu explains. She says she wants to combine artificial intelligence and engineering in order to automate fleets of robotic aircraft, ground vehicles, and both surface and underwater marine vessels. If all these can perform tasks with limited human intervention, even in an environment where satellite navigation tools no longer work, then they can carry out missions such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and target attack.

Shyu’s new efforts will build on existing commercial and U.S. military work in this area. For instance, the Pentagon has already demonstrated the ability to deploy 3-D-printed swarming micro drones from planes. This would help fighter pilots avoid taking the risk of loitering over hostile territory.

DEEP STRIKE

In early January the U.S. Army disclosed plans to test-fire a prototype supercannon as soon as 2024. This “long-range cannon” is envisioned to be able to strike targets 1,000 miles away, a range that would utterly dwarf the 25-mile reach of today’s artillery.

One of the key lessons from Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine was a need for the U.S. Army to extend its long-range strike systems. Now the Army is on track to field a number of new long-range missiles by 2023. The long-range cannon is not yet part of the weapons roster. It is what senior leaders call a “big bet” in their science and technology plan because it shows promise but still must prove its maturity before it is built for real-world missions. The idea is that this weapon would be used in tandem with the Army’s new Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, a truck-launched system that fires missiles at hypersonic speeds. This combination could punch through dense, sophisticated enemy air defenses and create an opening for U.S. military forces to break through. Even on its own, the cannon would be a much cheaper alternative to the estimated $106-million-per-shot tab of the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon.

In 2020 Congress, curious about the practicality of what lawmakers have called an “imaginative concept,” directed the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to conduct an independent review of the cannon project and report on its feasibility. That study’s findings have not yet been published, but the panel has briefed Army leaders—and key service officials say they are optimistic. “The expert bodies that we’ve had look at it come away saying, ‘Yeah, you can do this,’” says Brigadier General John Rafferty, Army Futures Command’s director of developing new long-range missiles and cannons. “There are certainly challenges associated with it.... But it’s about the only investment that’s looking at doing anything like this mission in a more affordable way.”

A rocket launcher shoots missiles during tactical and special exercises with scouts of the Guards Tank Army of the Western Military District at the Golovenki training ground in the Moscow region, Russia, on January 28, 2022.

SpaceX Loses up to 40 Satellites to Geomagnetic Storm after Starlink Launch

 SpaceX had to ditch most of its latest batch of Starlink satellites because they were disrupted by a geomagnetic storm after being launched from the Falcon 9 rocket. Up to 40 of the 49 satellites will re-enter the atmosphere or have already done so because they were unable to reach their intended orbits.

In an update posted yesterday, SpaceX said that on February 3, the Falcon 9's second stage deployed 49 "satellites into their intended orbit, with a perigee of approximately 210 kilometers above Earth, and each satellite achieved controlled flight." SpaceX initially deploys satellites into lower altitudes than they ultimately orbit in "so that in the very rare case any satellite does not pass initial system checkouts, it will quickly be deorbited by atmospheric drag," the company said. SpaceX has licenses for altitudes of 540 km to 570 km and 335 km to 346 km.

Last week's geomagnetic storm hit a day after launch, SpaceX explained:

Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday. These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase. In fact, onboard GPS suggests the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches. The Starlink team commanded the satellites into a safe-mode where they would fly edge-on (like a sheet of paper) to minimize drag—to effectively "take cover from the storm"—and continued to work closely with the Space Force's 18th Space Control Squadron and LeoLabs to provide updates on the satellites based on ground radars.

Preliminary analysis shows the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe-mode to begin orbit-raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will re-enter or already have re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. The deorbiting satellites pose zero collision risk with other satellites and by design demise upon atmospheric re-entry—meaning no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground.

SpaceX touted its systems for minimizing space debris, saying last week's "unique situation demonstrates the great lengths [to which] the Starlink team has gone to ensure the system is on the leading edge of on-orbit debris mitigation."

SpaceX has about 1,900 Starlink satellites in orbit. SpaceX has Federal Communications Commission permission to launch nearly 12,000 satellites and is seeking a license to launch an additional 30,000.