Deutschland — Gecko — Unbemanntes Landfahrzeug/Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV)

Weit­ere Informationen

Interne Links

Waf­fen­sys­teme Über­sicht / Weapon Sys­tems Overview

Struk­tur der Stre­itkräfte / Order of Battle

Stre­itkräfteüber­sicht / Armed Forces

Divi­sion Spezielle Oper­a­tio­nen (DSO)

Kom­man­do Spezial Kräfte (KSK)

Externe Links

Bun­desmin­is­teri­um der Verteidigung

www.bundeswehr.de

Aus­land­sein­sätze der Bundeswehr 

Gecko — RoboScout Sys­tem — Unmanned Ground Vehi­cle (UGV)

The Land robot­ics sys­tem RoboScout con­sists of a move­able com­mand post and two unmanned ground vehi­cles (UGV) called Gecko. 

Gecko with Sat­com On The Move (SOTM) anten­na Bild: Jens Hohmann Click to enlarge

The Gecko can be con­trolled over var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels. There is the pos­si­bil­i­ty to con­trol the Gecko through a satel­lite or ter­res­tri­al radio from a plane as a relay sta­tion to increase the com­mu­ni­ca­tion range. The com­mand­ing post can also steer the Gecko with its sta­tion­ary, ter­res­tri­al anten­na for close range oper­a­tions. Even through a com­put­er that is car­ried along by a sol­dier, the vehi­cle can be steered via WLAN on short distance.

The vehi­cle can fol­low autonomous­ly way­points as well. For this pur­pose it can fol­low a vehi­cle that is dri­ving ahead (con­voy-ser­vice), fol­low­ing pre-pro­grammed way­points (MULE-ser­vice) and dri­ve autonomous­ly a pre­vi­ous­ly self-dri­ven and record­ed route includ­ing obsta­cle detection.

The usage of the UGV can reduce the dan­ger and haz­ard for the deployed sol­diers by tak­ing over risky mis­sions. At the same time the Gecko trans­mits recon­nais­sance data in real time to the com­mand post and it can oper­ate twenty-four-seven.

Fur­ther­more the sys­tem is capa­ble to oper­ate as a com­mu­ni­ca­tion and relay sta­tion to trans­mit auto­mat­i­cal­ly in real time var­i­ous infor­ma­tion over a long dis­tance. This makes it pos­si­ble for the deployed units to increase their trans­mit­ting and receiv­ing range.

With the help of its high-per­for­mance sur­veil­lance plat­form the Gecko can oper­ate as a loca­tion and tar­get spot­ter as well as for bat­tle dam­age assess­ment. Due to the day­light cam­eras and the cooled IR-cam­era the sys­tem is able to per­form sur­veil­lances by day and night. The installed laser scan­ners and the GPS-sys­tem make it pos­si­ble for the Gecko to mea­sure dis­tances up to 40 km and to detect objects.

The sur­veil­lance plat­form can also be upgrad­ed with an almost recoil­less remote machine gun (e.g. FLW100), a guid­ed mis­sile or SIGINT (Sig­nals Intel­li­gence — intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing by inter­cep­tion of sig­nals), and the inte­gra­tion of weapons and elec­tri­cal interferer. 

Gecko Bild: Jens Hohmann Click to enlarge

The Gecko respec­tive­ly the RoboScout sys­tem can be trans­port­ed by a flatbed or a trail­er truck as well as with a CH-53 heli­copter. The vehi­cle has got a hybrid propul­sion with a diesel gen­er­a­tor which pro­vides the elec­tri­cal motors with pow­er. The alter­na­tive propul­sion takes place over a lithi­um ion accu­mu­la­tor which is charged through a gen­er­a­tor and makes in this way a noise-damped dri­ve pos­si­ble. The four elec­tri­cal wheel hub motors pro­vide the vehi­cle with a four wheel dri­ve and the abil­i­ty to turn on the spot.

From the oper­a­tion post the Gecko is steered through a steer­ing wheel and a brake and accel­er­a­tor ped­al. For a bet­ter view var­i­ous cam­eras pro­vide the dri­ver with pic­tures which can be watched on three mon­i­tors and for nav­i­ga­tion and loca­tion rea­sons an addi­tion­al­ly mon­i­tor shows the loca­tion and the dri­ven dis­tance in the bird’s eye per­spec­tive on a topo­graph­i­cal map. 

Spec­i­fi­ca­tions