US government research organisation MITRE has established the Mobile Autonomous Systems Experimentation (MASE) Laboratory to research ways to accelerate advanced autonomous technology for drones, commercial aircraft, tanks, and self-driving vehicles.

The lab’s centrepiece is the MASE Jeep, which has been augmented for autonomy by an aftermarket vendor and outfitted by MITRE engineers with sensors, analytic and data recorders, and processors. 

The Jeep provides the opportunity to explore new autonomous technologies and cutting-edge algorithms on a large mobile platform. The lab provides an integrated testing environment for emerging hardware, software, and approaches that will help to inform our government sponsors and collaboration partners.

“We have human interaction researchers who are experts at cognitive loading and how to effectively communicate between computers and people,” said Zachary LaCelle, a senior autonomous systems engineer at MITRE. “We have cyber experts and autonomy experts working on ground transportation, urban air mobility, and defence applications. Our systems thinking mentality accelerates solutions to all of these problems. This broad combination of domain expertise allows us to provide additional, unique perspectives in this cutting-edge challenge area.”

“Often, seeing the technology in action spurs additional ideas and conversation,” LaCelle said. “We have the experts available to assist in research integration for people coming to us with specialised questions. We can also test new ideas, prototype them, and transfer them out to industry and other researchers.”