SALT LAKE CITY, 31 Dec. 2008. Kairos Autonomi, a developer of retrofit unmanned ground vehicles and vessels for military and defense applications, has announced results from a moving land target test. A full-size pickup truck retrofitted with a stock Pronto4 Strap-on Autonomy System achieved speeds of 90+ mph during testing near Primm, Nev.

Enabling unmanned vehicles to autonomously drive at high speeds is an important component of training requirements for strike and close air support operations. These requirements call for a moving land target (MLT) to travel at a high speed and provide pilots with realistic targets in order to improve tactics and skills.

Kairos Autonomi captured some of the 90+ mph tests using on-board cameras with annotation overlay.

For the test, Kairos Autonomi personnel created a simulated moving ground target course on a dry lake bed. Over this six-mile course, a Chevy Avalanche using a stock Pronto4 system with standard software autonomously navigated a pre-programmed GPS waypoint path, says a representative. Kairos Autonomi completed multiple runs and achieved speeds of 90+ mph, with the Avalanche autonomously following the same path.

"This is another example of the Pronto4 system's ability to effectively and precisely control an existing ground vehicle in an unmanned operation," says Troy Takach, president and CEO of Kairos Autonomi. "The Pronto4-equipped vehicle is the first unmanned ground system to repeatedly achieve high speeds without human interaction."