Meeting the Increased Demand for Military Robots: An Interview With Foster -Miller’s Bob Quinn

What’s next for military unmanned ground vehicles? According to Bob Quinn, General Manager, TALON Operations, Foster-Miller, a variety of form factors, increased autonomy and a single point of control for multiple robots. Oh, and one other thing - there will be many, many more of them.
Foster-Miller, a QinetiQ North America company, produces the TALON robots for the U.S. military and first responders. The company is soon scheduled to ship its 2,000th TALON robot into Iraq or Afghanistan. Founded in 1956 by three graduates of MIT and located in the Boston area, Talon offers robotic systems and engineering designs among its product lines. Among its distinctions, the company has attained the SW-CMM Level 3 software certification from the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University.
Bob Quinn has been leading the TALON division for the past four years. Prior to joining Foster-Miller, he was president and CEO of Starmet Corp., producers of advanced metallurgical products for defense, aerospace and medical devices. He earned an MBA from Babson College and a BA from Tufts University. He is a widely-quoted subject matter expert on unmanned ground vehicles used by the military.

Robotics Trends (RT): Can you describe the current robot product line at Foster-Miller?

Bob Quinn (BQ): We have four families of unmanned ground vehicle robots: TALON, Dragon Runner, MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System), and the largest size is TAGS, which weigh about 6,000 pounds. So we go from the 15-lb Dragon Runner, a throwable robot, to the medium size robot family of TALON, to the larger class called MAARS, weighing about 350 lbs. More recently we introduced the TAGS large vehicle class, which is a diesel-powered off-road vehicle, funded by the U.S. Army’s Tank Automation R&D command in Detroit.
So our unmanned ground vehicle business will have small, medium, large and jumbo sizes. We serve the military predominantly, followed by domestic and international police forces that are looking for bomb squad robots, SWAT team support and some hazardous material applications.

RT: How did the TALON line come about?

BQ: Here is a little history: Foster-Miller (FM) has been working with unmanned ground systems since the 1970s. We began working on coal mining equipment and other very large, robots that by today’s standards would be considered difficult to control and move. In the late 1990s, FM got a DARPA contract to produce a man-portable robot that became TALON. The idea was to produce a much smaller robot that could be used frequently and easily on the battlefield, and able to be carried by a man rather than requiring a trailer or a truck.
So from the 1970s to 2000, robots went from being big and lumbering to being small and fast. We continue to see the trend towards smaller robots, so even though the 125 TALON robot is medium size, there is a family of small robots weighing 15 to 50 pounds that represent the small robot class.
Robots in the military have been used for explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) because of the situation in Iraq with roadside bombs. Over the last four to five years, EOD robots have come plentiful and higher growth is anticipated as the infantry is expected to make increased use of smaller robots for military applications.
Robots have proved their worth in Iraq and Afghanistan by saving many lives. The future seems to be one of not having just one robot size but a family of small, medium, large and jumbo robots. Customers would like to see common controls, such as one controller that can operate any one of these robots. The size class will be determined by the mission. Customers would also like to be able to operate multiple robots from one control station. Today we offer direct tele-operations, one control station operating one robot. But the robotics world is quickly going to a multi-robot world operationally.