EVOLVING THE ROBOTIC TECHNOLOGY KERNEL TO EXPAND FUTURE FORCE AUTONOMOUS GROUND VEHICLE CAPABILITIES

<title>ABSTRACT</title> <p>This paper presents the conceptual design, development, and implementation of the Robotic Technology Kernel (RTK) in a Polaris GEM e2 by the United States Military Academy's autonomy research team. RTK is the autonomous software suite of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Ground Vehicles Systems Center and to this point has primarily been used within off-road environments. The research team's primary objectives were to verify RTK's platform-agnostic characteristic by implementing the control software on a small, low-speed electric vehicle and augmenting the software to provide the additional capability of operating within an established infrastructure rule set.</p> <p><bold>Citation:</bold> J. Cymerman, S. Yim, D. Larkin, K. Pegues, W. Gengler, S. Norman, Z. Maxwell, N. Gasparri, M. Pollin, C. Calderon, J. Angle, J. Collier, “Evolving the Robotic Technology Kernal to Expand Future Force Autonomous Ground Vehicle Capabilities,” In <italic>Proceedings of the Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium</italic> (GVSETS), NDIA, Novi, MI, Aug. 13-15, 2019.</p>