The Army could soon have its first Unmanned Ground Vehicle!The first prototype of Unmanned Ground Vehicle on BMP-II vehicle platform has been developed by the Combat Vehicles Research & Development Establishment (CVRDE), Avadi, Chennai. The prototype consists of a drive-by-wire (DBW) system which includes electro-mechanical actuators and drives for the driver interfaces such as acceleration, brake, gear shifting, steering, clutch, parking brake, etc. The DBW system is controlled by a PXI-based controller in the remote vehicle and receives commands on a wireless LAN from a lab view-based GUI located in the base station.
The position feedbacks from the encoders on the steering actuators and from limit switches on the gear shift levers are obtained at the base station for accurate control. The clutching and gear shifting operations have been combined in the GUI, rendering the advantages of an automatic transmission to the conventional powerpack. Remote switching on the engine is also built in the controller. The unmanned BMP was demonstrated to Dr A Sivathanu Pillai, Distinguished Scientist on 25 May 2009. The signals from the engine, like engine RPM, vehicle speed, etc are acquired by a data acquisition card and displayed in the GUI. The electro-mechanical actuators for the BMP-II have been designed in such a way that the driver’s accessibilityto all the control pedals is not affected. The reverse effect on the actuators due to the manual override was considered during the design and selection of electro-mechanical actuators.
Text & Photo: DRDO
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