Case Study of the Evaluation and Verification of a PackBot Model in NRMM 2005-01-0844

The NATO Reference Mobility Model (NRMM)[1] is the primary mobility software used by the US Department of Defense, its contractors and NATO countries to evaluate various metrics of proposed vehicle systems for acquisition. The NRMM is a vehicle mobility performance model developed in the 1970's[2] that combines mobility related technologies into one comprehensive software package designed to predict the physically constrained vehicle and terrain interaction while operating in both on and off road environments. The empirically based relationships within NRMM are measurements taken from actual vehicles run over a variety of terrains and are geared towards vehicles weighing more than 1500 pounds. As the Army focuses on a lighter, faster and more mobile fighting force, standard military vehicles are decreasing in size with many newultra lightweight autonomous systems being designed. This fundamental shift in the size and weight of military vehicle systems, questions the NRMM predictions for on and off road performance. The following paper describes a case study comparing NRMM predictions of the current Future Combat System (FCS) Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV), This paper defines required extensions in the existing data fields for the terrain and vehicle to support predictions of SUGV's in NRMM.