Safety challenges in deploying unmanned ground vehicles in real world environments

Unmanned Vehicles are helping to increase operator safety by enabling the operators to control the vehicle from a remote location away from any immediate danger, but the combination of novel technologies and unpredictable environments leads to complex safety challenges for both the vehicle manufacturer and operator alike. This paper provides an insight, from BAE Systems perspective, on the challenges of delivering Unmanned Ground Vehicle programmes into the real world, using examples of BAE Systems Unmanned Ground Vehicle projects and other Unmanned Vehicles in the public domain to illustrate some of these safety challenges and to discuss possible solutions to them.