As part of DARPA's PerceptOR program, an NREC-led team has developed a novel semi-autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that includes a dedicated unmanned air vehicle - a "Flying Eye" - that flies ahead of the UGV to detect holes and other hazards before the onboard UGV sensors would otherwise be able to detect them. The improved obstacle sensing due to dual, well-separated views and the optimized route planning enabled by the Flying Eye's reconnaissance increase autonomous speed by decreasing the risk of the vehicle being disabled or trapped and decreasing the need for both operator intervention and communications bandwidth.
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