Autonomous Trailer Hitch System

The Army’s current equipment for towing tactical trailers is over 80 years old. The standard pintle hitch and trailer lunette have significant adverse impacts on current operations because they require exact alignment to connect the trailer. Current methods waste time and fuel and increase risk for soldiers operating this outdated equipment. The fielding of Autonomous Ground Resupply (AGR) technology will make developing an autonomous truck-trailer system critically important to enable an evolution from “optionally driven vehicles” to “optionally manned vehicles”.  Our vision is to develop and deliver an autonomous hitch system to enable the use of trucks and trailers in AGR sustainment operations, and to significantly improve versatility, increase speed, and reduce soldier risk in the use of prime movers and trailers in all operations.  In this project, we propose to deliver an autonomous trailer couple/uncouple capability by leveraging TeleSwivel LLC’s TRL 7 power articulation hitch and adding two key supporting capabilities: a positioning and control system for teleoperation and autonomous couple/decouple, and an automatic hitch that replaces human action in completing the pintle-lunette connection. At the conclusion of this Phase 1 work, we will deliver validated designs for the positioning system and auto-hitch engineered for the M1075A1 PLS and M1076 Trailer combination that are set for transition to prototype production in Phase 2.