Replacing the Pintle/Lunette: Autonomous Vehicle Towing

The ArmyÆs current equipment for towing is over 80 years old. The standard pintle hitch and trailer/towbar lunette have significant adverse impacts on current operations with crewed vehicles because they require exact alignment to connect the trailer and multiple soldier actions to operate the pintle. Current methods waste time and fuel and increase risk by creating situations where soldiers must lift heavy trailer tongues and towbars or get between a moving truck and the trailer to complete the connection.Ā Adverse conditionsŚweather, terrain, and limited visibilityŚcombine with this outdated technology to make an aggravating and time-wasting task dangerous, and even deadly, for soldiers. The fielding of autonomous vehicles will make developing a new method to connect a prime mover to a towed vehicle a mission essential requirement.Ā Deploying systems such as Autonomous Transport Vehicle-System (ATV-S), Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher (AML), and the Robotic Combat Vehicle Program (RCV) will mean fewer soldiers per vehicle. Units will not have the manpower to connect prime movers to mission-critical trailers or to a disabled robotic vehicle for recovery. Our vision is to develop and deliver an autonomous hitch system to significantly improve versatility, increase speed, and reduce soldier risk in the use of prime movers and towed vehicles on future MDO battlefields. ĀIn this project, we propose to develop and test an auto-hitch mechanism to replace the pintle/lunette and deliver a secure ōhands-freeö method to connect a prime mover to a towed vehicle without human intervention.ĀĀĀ The auto-hitch mechanism proposed here would enable a hands-free secure connection between a prime mover and towed vehicle using a hitch block and probe mechanism that provide a large target area to overcome misalignment, and rotation on the 3 axes required in towing.Ā The collar locking mechanism in the hitch block uses a proven loaded bearing block design to make a secure mechanical capture of the probe without the levers and lock pins of the current pintle.