GVSETS 2025 — The US Army, in partnership with Clemson University, recently revealed the Deep Orange 16 semi-autonomous vehicle, the latest upgrade over previous Deep Orange vehicles designed to work in support of emergency response in extreme conditions.
The vehicle was on display Tuesday here at the GVSETS Conference in Novi, Mich.
Deep Orange 16 was developed by the university’s graduate automotive engineering students to provide an optionally manned capability for deployment in challenging scenarios.
Sponsored by the Army, Deep Orange is a vehicle prototype program in which Clemson students design, engineer and build a new ground platform each year. After passing through a series of tests within the university, the systems have been delivered to the branch for conducting man-unmanned experimentations, identifying new user cases and supporting the refining doctrine deployment.
RELATED: Army, industry vehicle teams embrace off-the-shelf solutions, but not always
Speaking to Breaking Defense, Robert Prucka, director of the Virtual Prototyping of Autonomy-Enabled Ground Systems Research Center (VIPR-GS) at Clemson, stressed that several improvements were added to the vehicle’s architecture compared to Deep Orange 15.
“We went through it and redesigned its rear to significantly add more space. We also cut about 10 percent of its weight,” Prucka said. “Through that process, we made a much simpler litter loading mechanism than what we showcased last year.”
Other Deep Orange 16 enhancements include a new thermal management system, better powertrain capacities and software upgrades to increase maneuverability.
With a range of 350 km (217 miles), its weatherproof exterior has been engineered for operation in a variety of challenging environments, including off-road conditions and unpredictable terrain.
“We have a system on the vehicle that can look ahead, scan the road profile and then adjust the suspension to make the ride smoother,” Prucka claimed.
Additionally, the university says Deep Orange 16 is equipped with a 360-degree camera system with tire-level views for obstacle detection, an AI-powered heads-up display to alert drivers to hazards up to 100 feet away and onboard medical monitoring to track patient vitals in real time during transport.
Accommodating six people, its interior has a rotating passenger seat to support multiple operational roles. Its MOLLE storage system, in turn, has been designed to enable secure, modular organization of rescue and medical gear.
In the case of its rear hatch, it fits a standard pallet of supplies, while its exterior compartments can transport fire rescue equipment.
This year, instead of being delivered to the US Army, the Deep Orange platform will be kept with Clemson to be deployed as a research platform.
The vehicles will support future experiments with new methodologies and capabilities to be developed under the Deep Orange program and as part of other projects within the university.
“We will be integrating more of our advanced research, mostly algorithms around powertrain control and autonomous vehicle control, and test them more and more,” Prucka said.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Flavia Camargos Pereira
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://breakingdefense.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
