If I could talk to the Main Battle Tank

If you've ever had an urge to talk to a Main Battle Tank, then General Dynamics Land Systems has your back. Teaming up with Primordial Labs, the company has announced that it will integrate natural language command and control in combat vehicles.

Those of you who've never had to work inside a tank or similar armored combat vehicle can count yourselves lucky. These battlewagons have many pluses, but user-friendliness isn't one of them. In fact, crew spaces and comfort are pretty much on the bottom of the priorities list.

Being part of a tank crew means being exposed to high levels of noise and vibration in a huge machine that's constantly bouncing you about like a pea in a tin. That's bad enough if you're not doing anything at the moment, but much worse if you're engaged in combat operations where one is racing across country, maneuvering wildly, and blasting away with the main gun while trying to carry out any number of tasks simultaneously.

All that adds up to a lot of stress, a heavy demand on a soldier's cognitive skills, a need for long and exhaustive training to make everything almost instinctive, and all that combined with a physical workload that is exactly the opposite of pleasant.

Part of this problem is that the crews have to deal with a bewildering array of buttons, switches, and other physical controls. True, computers have taken over many tasks, but they have their own aggravating bottlenecks in the form of mazes of menus that need to be scrolled through in order to get things done.

To help simplify this, General Dynamics wants to use interfaces that rely on natural human language on computers that don't need an internet link to understand what the crew wants, and carry out the appropriate tasks by managing the on-board sensors, displays, communications, and off-board uncrewed systems by responding to ordinary words and sentences.

To do this, the system will use the Anura Natural Language Command and Control (NLC2) software platform that can be installed in any crewed or uncrewed combat vehicle. This system is designed to act as a single interface that can take on new subsystems and software updates without the need for a dedicated workstation or distinct control schemes for each added capability. Needless to say, the system has to be robust enough to handle battlefield conditions, including electronic warfare and communications blackouts.

The upshot of all this is that future tank crews will be smaller in number, require less training, so they can head into service faster, and will have a much lighter workload. It also means that, for example, the tank commander can concentrate on fighting while telling the computer what information is required and what the system needs to do with it with the same level of natural speech as one would use with another human being.

Of course, there are hurdles to overcome. One is that with the noise in the tank, the crew will have to use the sort of personal helmet microphones as used by helicopter pilots. The other is that the developers will have to do a better job than many consumer voice command systems that often become annoyingly cheerful and chatty, and have a tendency to misunderstand what song you want played to the point where a musical interlude turns into a one-sided shouting match by the beet-red customer on the verge of an apoplectic fit.

"Our customer has made it very clear that the formations of the future are dynamic," said Lee Ritholtz, CEO of Primordial Labs. "Platforms are increasingly software-defined and incorporate advanced on-board and off-board robotics. The Army has a need for any soldier, in any formation, to intuitively control any system. We built Anura to help our customers realize this vision through reduced cognitive, physical, and training burden. Anura is the interface that empowers a small armored crew to seamlessly interact with everything from on-board mission systems to uncrewed teammates. Partnering with GDLS puts Anura on the platforms that define America’s armored force. Together, we’re delivering the dynamic formations the Army and Marine Corps need."

Source: General Dynamics