{"id":472,"date":"2009-06-04T20:40:05","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T03:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=472"},"modified":"2017-04-25T04:50:35","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T11:50:35","slug":"ripsaw-tank-delivers-death-at-60mph-popular-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/ripsaw-tank-delivers-death-at-60mph-popular-science","title":{"rendered":"Ripsaw Tank Delivers Death at 60MPH \u2014 Popular Science"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
An unmanned beast that cruises over any terrain at speeds that leave an M1A Abrams in the dust<\/div>\n
By Bjorn Carey<\/span> Posted 05.21.2009 at 12:04 pm<\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
Mean Machine:<\/span> Troops could use the Ripsaw as an advance scout, sending it a mile or two ahead of a convoy, and use its cameras and new sensor technology to sniff out roadside bombs or ambushes<\/span> John B. Carnett<\/span><\/div>\n
View Photo Gallery<\/a> <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Today\u2019s featured Invention Award<\/a> winner really requires no justification\u2013it\u2019s an unmanned, armed tank faster than anything the US Army has. Behold, the Ripsaw.<\/em><\/p>\n

Cue up the Ripsaw\u2019s greatest hits on YouTube, and you can watch the unmanned tank tear across muddy fields at 60 mph, jump 50 feet, and crush birch trees. But right now, as its remote driver inches it back and forth for a photo shoot, it\u2019s like watching Babe Ruth forced to bunt with the bases loaded. The Ripsaw, lurching and belching black puffs of smoke, somehow seems restless.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Like their creation, identical twins Geoff and Mike Howe, 34, don\u2019t like to sit still for long. At age seven, they built a log cabin. Ten years later, they converted a school bus into a drivable, transforming stage for their heavy-metal band, Two Much Trouble. In 2000 they couldn\u2019t agree on their next project: Geoff favored a jet-turbine-powered off-road truck; Mike, the world\u2019s fastest tracked vehicle. \u201cThat weekend, Mike calls me down to his garage,\u201d Geoff says. \u201cHe\u2019s already got the suspension built for the Ripsaw. So we went with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every engineer they consulted said they couldn\u2019t best the 42mph top speed of an M1A Abrams, the most powerful tank in the world. Other tanks are built to protect the people inside, with frames made of heavy armored-steel plates. Designed for rugged unmanned missions, the Ripsaw just needed to go fast, so the brothers started trimming weight. First they built a frame of welded steel tubes, like the ones used by Nascar, that provides 50 percent more strength at half the weight.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n
Ripsaw: How It Works:<\/span> To glide over rough terrain at top speed, the Ripsaw has shock absorbers that provide 14 inches of travel. But when the suspension compresses, it creates slack that could cause a track to come off, potentially flipping the vehicle. So the inventors devised a spring-loaded wheel at the front that extends to keep the tracks taut. The Ripsaw has never thrown a track<\/span> Bland Designs<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
Behind the Wheel:<\/span> The Ripsaw\u2019s six cameras send live, 360-degree video to a control room, where program manager Will McMaster steers the tank<\/span> John B. Carnett<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

When you reinvent the tank, finding ready-made parts is no easy task, and a tread light enough to spin at 60 mph and<\/em> strong enough to hold together at that speed didn\u2019t exist. So the Howes hand-shaped steel cleats and redesigned the mechanism for connecting them in a track. (Because the patent for the mechanism, one of eight on Ripsaw components, is still pending, they will reveal only that they didn\u2019t use the typical pin-and-bushing system of connecting treads.) The two-pound cleats weigh about 90 percent less than similarly scaled tank cleats. With the combined weight savings, the Ripsaw\u2019s 650-horsepower V8 engine cranks out nine times as much horsepower per pound as an M1A Abrams.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

While working their day jobs \u2014 Mike as a financial adviser, Geoff as a foreman at a utilities plant \u2014 the self-taught engineers hauled the Ripsaw prototype from their workshop in Maine to the 2005 Washington Auto Show, where they showed it to army officials interested in developing weaponized unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). That led to a demonstration for Maine Senator Susan Collins, who helped the Howes secure $1.25 million from the Department of Defense.The brothers founded Howe and Howe Technologies in 2006 and set to work upgrading various Ripsaw systems, including a differential drive train that automatically doles out the right amount of power to each track for turns. The following year they handed it over to the Army\u2019s Armament Research Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), which paired it with a remote-control M240 machine gun and put the entire system through months of strenuous tests. \u201cWhat really set it apart from other UGVs was its speed,\u201d says Bhavanjot Singh, the ARDEC project manager overseeing the Ripsaw\u2019s development. Other UGVs top out at around 20 mph, but the Ripsaw can keep up with a pack of Humvees.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n
Over the Hill:<\/span> Despite the best efforts of inventors Mike [left] and Geoff Howe, the Ripsaw has proven unbreakable. It did once break a suspension mount \u2014 and drove on for hours without trouble<\/span> John B. Carnett<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Back on the field, the tank has been readied for the photo. The program manager for Howe and Howe Technologies, Will McMaster, who is sitting at the Ripsaw\u2019s controls around the corner and roughly a football field away, drives it straight over a three-foot-tall concrete wall. The brothers think that when the $760,000 Ripsaw is ready for mass production this summer, feats like this will give them a lead over other companies vying for a military UGV contract. \u201cEvery other UGV is small and uses [artificial intelligence] to avoid obstacles,\u201d Mike says. \u201cThe Ripsaw doesn\u2019t have to avoid obstacles; it drives over them.\u201c
\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An unmanned beast that cruises over any terrain at speeds that leave an M1A Abrams in the dust By Bjorn Carey Posted 05.21.2009 at 12:04 pm Mean Machine: Troops could use the Ripsaw as an advance scout, sending it a mile or two ahead of a convoy, and use its cameras and new sensor technology [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,14,38,9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-counterterrorism","category-defense","category-engineering","category-military","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52277,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions\/52277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}