Establishment of a Center for Defense Robotics

A document presents an overview of the recently established
Joint Center for Unmanned Ground Vehicles (JC-UGV), located at
the Army’s Detroit Arsenal in Warren, Michigan. The JC-UGV is
intended to become the central facility for managing all phases of
the life cycles of military robotic ground vehicles: from concept;
through research and development, acquisition, and sustainment;
to the end of life. The JC-UGV is also intended to facilitate the
move of the Robotic Systems Joint Program Office (RS-JPO) from
Huntsville, Alabama to the Detroit Arsenal as part of a consolidation
of military development and acquisition of all ground vehicles.
An important part of the mission of the JC-UGV is to provide a system-
integration laboratory that will include both robotic hardware
and a distributed computational-simulation environment that will
enable researchers and developers in the RS-JPO, industry, and
academia to collaborate to solve complex problems. In addition to
describing the aforementioned developments in detail, the document
describes the organizational structure of the JC-UGV, discusses
the role of the JC-UGV as one of several military organizations
oriented toward lifecycle management, and summarizes JC-UGV
university outreach, industry outreach, and pilot programs