jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) (03/21/89)
For funding purposes, mobile research robots are now classified as
"Non-Lethal Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles". This comes under the new
Dod Non-Lethal UAV Master Plan, adminstered by the Army and Marine
Corps Unmanned Ground Vehicle Joint Program Office (UGV-JPO),
headquartered at the Marine base in Quantico, VA. Program manager
is LTC Robert Harper.
The House and Senate Appropriations Joint Conference Committee,
in its report on the 1989 DoD budget, was highly critical of the lack of
results in robotics vehicle work, and explicitly directed that "at least
one current advanced develoment robotics project will be terminated".
Source: "Unmanned Systems", Winter 1988-89, p. 12-13.
John Nagle