The Bear Robot

Rescuing Soldiers on the Battlefield and Helping the Infirm at Home

One of the most dangerous jobs in a combat situation is the extraction and evacuation of a wounded soldier while still under fire. This is especially true in the current war against terrorism, which features enemies that are not likely to respect the noncombatant status of medics.

A company called VECNA Robotics believes that it has come up with a solution. The company proposes to build, for the United States Army, the Battlefield Extraction and Retrieval Robot (BEAR), which will take over the job of evacuating wounded soldiers from a combat zone. The VECNA Robotics BEAR project has won key seed funding in the form of a grant from the US Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), a part of the US Army Medical Research and Material Command (USAMRMC).

The BEAR robot would have three main elements. It would have a hydraulic upper body, with “arms” and a “head”, a mobile platform, and dynamic balancing behavior software and hardware. The latter would partly consist of two independently tracked “legs” which will allow the BEAR robot to balance itself in a variety of positions and to move over difficult terrain. The BEAR robot looks remarkably humanoid.

A prototype model of the BEAR robot has already been built and tested. It has proven the ability to pick up a fully weighted human dummy and carry it while in the upright position without break for fifty minutes.

The production model of the BEAR robot will be capable of carrying a human or other payload up to five hundred pounds over a distance and safely deposit it as directed by a remote operator. The BEAR will initially be operated remotely, but will eventually have autonomous behavior software that will allow it to be controlled more easily.

Of course, the applications of a BEAR robot would go beyond extracting wounded soldiers from the battlefield. It can perform other kinds of rescue, from a burning or a structurally compromised building, a nuclear reactor that has gone critical, or any other hazardous situation where it might not be prudent to send in a human medic.