Join 8,500 technologists, regulators and users across commercial and defense sectors for AUVSI XPONENTIAL 2019, the largest, most comprehensive trade show for unmanned and autonomous systems. As adoption spreads and applications expand, XPONENTIAL is the one event that brings together the entire unmanned systems community to share ideas, collaborate across markets, capitalize on best practices and emerging trends and harness the power of unmanned technology for your business.

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Press Releases

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions (NASDAQ: KTOS), a global leader in developing advanced unmanned system technologies, teamed with Royal Truck & Equipment, the premier builder of Truck Mounted Attenuator (TMA) vehicles and highway safety systems, to deploy the Autonomous Truck Mounted Attenuator (ATMA) as the world’s first self-driving work zone vehicle. The ATMA is an Autonomous Vehicle (AV) that uses driverless technology to eliminate one of the most dangerous jobs a highway worker can be assigned in the work zone.

Highway workers are routinely placed in high-risk situations, but are at especially high risk when assigned the dangerous job of driving a TMA vehicle. The TMA vehicle, also known as an Impact Protection Vehicle (IPV), is a truck that follows behind slow moving highway maintenance vehicles as a human-driven mobile crash barrier absorbing the impact of traffic accidently entering the work zone. “Driving a TMA is extremely dangerous and drivers are at serious risk of lifelong injury, painful rehabilitation, and even death,” says Maynard Factor, Business Development Director at Kratos Defense. “To eliminate this dangerous assignment, Kratos Defense developed the Autonomous TMA (ATMA) by retrofitting standard TMA vehicles with driverless technology to enable unmanned operation,” says Factor.

The first ATMA systems were successfully deployed in 2017 and currently there are multiple systems deployed across the United States and Europe. “Highways are becoming increasingly dangerous due to distracted drivers texting, following too closely, falling asleep, etc., and work zone fatalities from traffic-related crashes average in the hundreds per year. Our main goal in developing the ATMA was to increase worker safety by removing them from behind the wheel of a vehicle deployed for the sole purpose of operating as a crash barrier,” says Factor. “Thousands of human-driven TMA vehicles are deployed worldwide every day and we developed the ATMA to eliminate this dangerous assignment ensuring every worker comes home safely.”

The unmanned ATMA operates in a multi-vehicle Leader/Follower configuration with a human driven highway maintenance vehicle (i.e. line striping or road sweeper vehicle). In the Leader/Follower configuration the system enables the maintenance vehicle (Leader) to transmit navigation data via encrypted V2V communications to the ATMA (Follower) which uses the data to follow behind the Leader completely unmanned as it travels along the route. The ATMA system features component redundancy, an active safety system, high accuracy GPS/GPS-Denied navigation, encrypted V2V communications, multi-modal front and side-view obstacle detection, and a robust User Interface providing system feedback, situational awareness, multi-camera views, and operator controls. The ATMA has a clearly defined objective, operates at slow speed, requires zero modification to existing infrastructure, is extremely easy to operate, and has been one of the world’s most successful driverless vehicle solutions ever deployed.

For more information about the ATMA, please visit www.kratosdefense.com or stop by Booth #226 on the AUVSI Exhibit Floor.

Products

Autonomous Truck Mounted Attenuator (ATMA)

The world's first self-driving work zone vehicle built with advanced unmanned systems technology. The ATMA is an Autonomous Vehicle that uses driverless technology to eliminate one of the most dangerous jobs a highway worker can be assigned.... More Info Less Info

The unmanned ATMA operates in a multi-vehicle Leader/Follower configuration with a human driven highway maintenance vehicle (i.e. line striping or road sweeper vehicle). In the Leader/Follower configuration the system enables the maintenance vehicle (Leader) to transmit navigation data via encrypted V2V communications to the ATMA (Follower) which uses the data to follow behind the Leader completely unmanned as it travels along the route. The ATMA system features component redundancy, an active safety system, high accuracy GPS/GPS-Denied navigation, encrypted V2V communications, multi-modal front and side-view obstacle detection, and a robust User Interface providing system feedback, situational awareness, multi-camera views, and operator controls. The ATMA has a clearly defined objective, operates at slow speed, requires zero modification to existing infrastructure, is extremely easy to operate, and has been one of the world’s most successful driverless vehicle solutions ever deployed.