'Smart' instruments enhance Army's testing capabilities.

Army engineers are working to equip the service's new weapon systems with electronic devices that can sense and record critical information. The technology, product of the Developmental Test Command, is designed not only to improve the Army's testing capabilities, but also to help provide critical data throughout a program's entire life cycle.

The Developmental Test Command (DTC) conducts thousands of tests each year on new or upgraded military systems that defense contractors produce for the Army. Land vehicles and other military hardware, for example, undergo rigorous testing at DTC's Aberdeen Test Center in Maryland.

To enhance the Army's testing capabilities, engineers at Aberdeen have developed "intelligent instrumentation" that can sense and record a wide range of data, such as vehicle performance characteristics, parts reliability, wear and tear, and the rate of fuel consumption when soldiers operate systems in the field. In January, a group of engineers from the Aberdeen Test Center traveled to Fort Lewis, Wash., to install specially designed instrumentation packages in the armored wheeled vehicles loaned to the U.S. Army by Canada, Germany and Italy.

ATC engineers designed the devices to collect data on these vehicles, as two Brigade Combat Teams at Fort Lewis put them through their paces. The BCTs are the Army's new medium brigades and will use a Light Armored Vehicle (called the Stryker Interim Armored Vehicle), instead of ranks. Until the Stryker is fielded, soldiers at Fort Lewis will train with loaned LAVs.

The Fort Lewis project was an opportunity for DTC to demonstrate the merits of a program known as virtual information system integrated online, or VISION. This technology involves intelligent test instrumentation, the use of telecommunication systems to relay test data from remote sites and a digital library on the Internet--where program managers and other decision makers can retrieve the latest information about tests.

At the heart of VISION is a suite of devices known as the advanced distributed modular acquisition systems, or ADMAS. These instruments give test engineers and managers of military acquisition programs valuable data on vehicle performance characteristics such as turning radius, acceleration, engine heat, power output, fluid temperatures and the response of vehicle components to various shocks and vibrations.

The data acquisition systems installed in the loaned vehicles at Fort Lewis and embedded in the Army's Interim Armored Vehicle will help the Army fine-tune the type of testing the Stryker and other systems are to undergo at Aberdeen and elsewhere, said Craig Turner, who leads ATC's automotive instrumentation team. Turner believes similar devices ultimately will he embedded in all new Army systems as they are manufactured. They also will be used throughout the systems' life cycle for purposes that go beyond testing--recording logistics and maintenance information, such as rate of fuel use, rate of wear on parts and the amount of ammunition expended.

"Our goal is to perfect instrumentation on military platforms," Turner explained. "With the Fort Lewis exercise and the tests we're doing here (at Aberdeen), we are demonstrating how the Army will be able to put embedded instruments in vehicles when they are built--and use this instrumentation to harvest data during testing, during training and peacetime conditions, and even during combat," he noted. "Once you perfect the technology of acquiring data as vehicles are used and deployed, you can record anything you can put a sensor on. We talk about anticipatory logistics, where we will monitor the fuel level and consumption, monitor engine oil pressure and parameters, and maybe do a health test of a major power-train part or electrical system."

While ATC developed the VISION data instrumentation, digital library and communication links, the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) contributed its high-performance computing capabilities at Aberdeen Proving Ground. ARL also developed database applications and helped with the design of the VISION web site.

Turner said the Army should use the feedback that smart instruments provide during system operations to keep refining and tailoring DTC's developmental tests. This information also can enhance tests by the Army Operational Test Command that involve soldiers in a maneuver scenario, he added.

Even before the demonstration at Fort Lewis, ATC had presented the smart instrumentation to other organizations, including the Army's program manager for the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV), the U.S. Department of Transportation and Volvo Trucks of North America. Through its Intelligent Transportation Systems program, the Department of Transportation is trying to reach a goal of 50 percent fewer truck-related fatalities in the United States by 2010. The department funded the development of new technologies to help drivers avoid collisions and automatically notify authorities when an accident occurs.

Manufacturers such as Volvo, Mack Truck and Freightliner have responded by rolling our their first test vehicles under DOT'S Intelligent Vehicles Initiative, a program that consists of multiple demonstration projects. The intent is to accelerate the use of technologies that warn drivers of dangerous situations, recommend actions and, in some cases, even assume partial control of the vehicle.

Technology Demonstration

Beginning about two years ago, ATC became involved in the Intelligent Vehicles Initiative through a test of 100 Volvo trucks driving various routes across the United States and Canada. The joint test program with DOT and Volvo demonstrated that ATC's sensors and recorders can be integrated into vehicle designs and provide information that helps solve problems, Turner said.

"We worked with Volvo Truck of North America and designed our equipment to interface into the wiring harness and connectors of the trucks," Turner explained. "It is absolutely an example of installing a complete data-acquisition device during manufacture ... integrated right into the design of the vehicle.

"Now that the analysts are getting into the data and using the [VISION] tools, they are coming up with new things they need to know, so it's continuing to expand. With 100 vehicles running across the U.S. and Canada day in and day out, and 6 million miles of the 25-million-mile test completed, you can imagine the magnitude of the data," Turner said. "Even with these terabytes of data, however, you can query the field and drill down to find out what is happening in minute detail. You can find out what happened in a vehicle the instant a driver hit the brakes. If we can make the system smart enough to perform the analysis required to answer questions, we can also make it smart enough to anticipate problems."

Project managers of military systems, additionally, can take advantage of the VISION smart data acquisition systems and digital library to help them anticipate problems and keep their programs on track, officials said.

"We've worked with ATC to use VISION for some tests, because we needed to get data relatively quickly and in some derail," said John Hretz, a test engineer with the Army's FMTV program office, in Warren, Mich. "We've used the digital library for about a year. There have been a few glitches, some needed improvements to administrative housekeeping and some things we would like to do better, but ATC is working on that."

It sometimes takes testers more rime to enter data into the digital library than he would have preferred, Hretz explained, and it can be difficult to locate certain types of information in a sequential order and understand it. But the availability of the digital library from any location to users with access rights makes VISION a useful program, he added.

"The way it's set up now, if you are on travel and have a government laptop, you can access the information you need to keep up with what's going on," Hretz said.

According to David Brown, who oversees DTC's test technology, "There is a strong correlation between the transformation in the Army and a revolutionary transformation in testing." The Army is modernizing existing weapon systems with advanced digital communications technologies and enhanced situational awareness capabilities. It is investing in research and development to field a lighter, more versatile yet lethal Objective Force by 2010. The service has identified more than 30 key technologies that it will need for the Objective Force and earmarked billions of dollars for the research and development needed to make these technologies a reality by 2010.

The Objective Force will fight with so-called Future Combat Systems linked together on the battlefield in a network. Testers will need to work from diverse locations, also linked into a network. The VISION program, using high-speed communication links such as satellite telecommunications and the Defense Research and Engineering Network, is making this "distributed resting" possible, said Brown.

"The bottom line is that our Virtual Proving Ground initiative provides the modeling and simulation capabilities--the environments and the stimuli--we need to test future systems in a distributed fashion. VISION gives us the capability to build remotely controlled instrumentation into systems, remotely configure this instrumentation from afar, and make data acquired available for downloading from anywhere."

Ultimately, said Turner, "the goal is to put information at the fingertips of people who don't specifically have engineering data from a vehicle to make decisions--and give it to them so quickly and so accurately that it gives materiel developers an edge in perfecting their designs and gives the commander an edge in combat."

Mike Cast is a public affairs officer at the Army Developmental Test Command, in Aberdeen, Md.