Innovations & technologies

Robots to pull wounded soldiers off battlefield

During battle, one of the problems of trying to save injured soldiers on the battlefield is the risk it poses to those trying to retrieve the wounded, oftentimes getting hurt themselves. Not only soldiers trying to reach their injured friends , but many medics have suffered such injuries while trying to treat soldiers injured during battle in the open field. Unmanned vehicles used to recover injured soldiers could be armored to protect those soldiers on their way home. But the vehicles could do more than just recover soldiers. With units operating forward, sometimes behind enemy lines, the medical community could use unmanned aerial vehicle systems, or UAVs, to provide support to them.

“We already use robots on the battlefield today to examine IEDs, to detonate them,” says Maj. Gen. Steve Jones, commander of the American Army Medical Department Center and School and chief of the Medical Corps. “With some minor adaptation, we could take that same technology and use it to extract casualties that are under fire. How many medics have we lost, or other soldiers, because they have gone in under fire to retrieve a casualty? We can use a robotics device for that.”