PLS/ExLF

The U.S. Army’s Expedient Leader-Follower (ExLF) program is designed to enable uncrewed platoon convoys to be used by field units as alternate convoy equipment. Uncrewed vehicle convoys – Oshkosh Palletized Load System (PLS) trucks in this case – significantly reduce the risks of IEDs and other hazards commonly borne by warfighters.

As part of the CCDC Ground Vehicle Systems Center’s Autonomous Ground Resupply (AGR) and Expedient Leader Follower (ExLF) programs, RRAI authored and developed the base autonomy software used for the programs and deployed that technology onto Oshkosh’s PLS and LVSR vehicles. RRAI has since updated this technology into our commercial stack to continue improvements for the warfighter.

AutoDrive® is a fault-tolerant, vehicle-agnostic autonomy kit (A-Kit) that can be installed onto any tactical wheeled or tracked vehicle. AutoDrive supports varied modalities, including Leader-Follower, Teleoperation and Waypoint, providing critical functionality to support a variety of mission sets from logistics to combat operations.

Elements of this software were later integrated into the U.S. Army’s Robotic Technology Kernel (RTK) program. To-date, more than 60 AutoDrive-enhanced PLS vehicles have been fielded, constituting the largest active fleet of autonomous military vehicles in the world.