Robots in Military – Overview About Spying Robot

The spying robot as its name suggests is the one used for the purpose of spying on enemy territories. Its applications can be:

• At the time of war where it can be used to collect information from the enemy terrain and monitor that information at a far secure area, and safely devise a plan for the counter-attack.
• Tracking locations of terrorist organizations and then plan an attack at a suitable time.
• Making surveillance of any disaster-affected area where human beings can’t go.

A Brief Idea about War Field Spying Robot

So let us have a brief idea about how we can use a robot in war fields for spying purposes. All that is needed is a wireless camera fitted on the robot circuit which captures images and videos of enemy territories and transmits these images, which are received by the receiver unit of the TV.

We can design a simple prototype of a war field spying robot that can be controlled remotely and the images transmitted by the camera can be monitored and analyzed on a television.

Hardware Implementation of War Field Spying Robot

All we need to have is the following components to design a war field spying robot apart from a base with wheels and motors.

• Sensor Unit – A wireless Night Vision Camera: Apart from what a basic camera consists of, it consists of a transmitter unit. It captures images and transmits these images through the transmitter in the form of digital signals, which are received by the receiver unit connected to the TV or computer. The camera can be as far as 30 miles away from the receiver. A night vision camera can receive illumination either by amplifying the visible light using image intensifiers or using infrared light directly by objects – thermal imaging or infrared light reflected by objects-near infrared illumination.

• A Receiver Unit: The robot also consists of a receiver unit that receives the command signals for controlling the motors and thus the robot unit.

• Actuators: It consists of two DC motors as actuators that provide reverse and forward motion to the robot.

• Control Unit: It consists of a remote transmitter unit consisting of a microcontroller, encoder, and an RF module and a receiver unit embedded on the circuit consisting of an RF receiver module, a microcontroller, and a decoder.

How is a War field Spying Robot Night Vision Camera Works?

The wireless night vision camera embedded on the robot consists of a wireless transmitter. A cluster of IR LEDs is placed which are used to provide IR light to the image sources. The reason IR light is preferred is that at night time, it is usually dark and since any camera needs light for illumination, infrared light is the most preferred option as all objects emit a range of Infrared light. The camera is powered with a 12 V battery and captures these images and transmits them to the receiver unit connected to a Television unit. The images are converted to digital signals by the transmitter unit and the receiver unit receives these digital signals and reconverts them to images and these images or videos are then monitored and analyzed on a Television unit.

Controlling the War Field Spying Robot

The entire control of the robot is done remotely. It consists of a transmitter section that transmits the required information to the receiver section. The Robot is simply covered by pressing a few buttons at the transmitter side.

The transmitter unit consists of an encoder which receives parallel data input from the microcontroller through the pushbuttons and transmits this parallel data in serial format through the RF module. On pressing the respective push button, Microcontroller is programmed to send relevant signals to the Encoder in parallel form. The encoder converts these parallel signals to serial form to be transmitted by the RF module. This serial data is modulated with a carrier signal using an RF transmitter and is the transmitter.  For example, if we press the left button, the microcontroller sends the command to the receiver unit through the encoder and the RF module.

The receiver unit consists of an RF receiver module which demodulates the received signal and a decoder which receives the serial data through the RF receiver module and converts it into parallel form. The Microcontroller uses this data to give an appropriate control signal to the motor driver IC to control the operation of the two motors. Thus the robot can be moved forward or in the reverse direction by controlling the motor, while the camera does its work simultaneously.

Robots in Military

Now that we had a brief idea about war field robot, let us have a brief recall of practical robots in defense.

One of the basic features of robots used in military operations is that they are not completely automatic. They are actually controlled remotely by human beings. The robots or unmanned machines as they are termed can be any moving object or a flying airplane fitted with all necessary equipment like sensors, LIDARS (Laser-based Communication RADARS), cameras, etc. Their operations can be from disposing of bombs to surveying enemy territories.

There are 3 kinds of unmanned machines used in military operations:

• Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV):  They are used for ground purposes. They can carry a heavy load, move on uneven terrains, and have various sensors and cameras fitted on them.

• Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV): They are used to carry aerial weapons and are basically flying machines.

• Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV): They are basically submarines or machines which can survey underwater.

Now that we have got a knowledge of the war field robot, let’s get into the task of knowing about the use of robotic in our country’s military operations and how our defense organization is progressing in this field?

Photo Credits:

• Gladiator Tactical UGV by wikimedia
• MQ-9 Reaper Unmanned Aerial Vehicle by wikimedia
• Talisman UUV by engineersgarage