It could have been the Iraqi desert with the burning sun and dusty blue sky.

	V.W.H. Campbell Jr., Post-Gazette The "Gladiator," an unmanned remote-controlled vehicle, makes its way over a dirt obstacle yesterday as a crowd observes. Carnegie Mellon and BAE Systems held a public demonstration of the robot, developed for the Marine Corps. Click photo for larger image.

But instead of sand, it was a tidy asphalt surface in Uniontown yesterday, where a military-green robot resembling a large all-terrain vehicle climbed and tumbled over makeshift stacks of wood planks and piles of stone-filled dirt, preening before a crowd uttering "ohs" and "ahs".

Known as the Gladiator Tactical Unmanned Ground Vehicle (TUGV), the six-wheeled combat robot spun around in circles displaying its strength and durability at what could have been its coming-out party-- the first public demonstration of the prototype designed and developed at Carnegie Mellon University and set to be built and manufactured at BAE Systems' Ground Vehicle Unit plant in Fayette County.

In February, CMU beat out defense giant Lockheed Martin for a $26.4 million Defense Department contract to produce a line of six Gladiator TUGV prototypes.

The goal is to build big remote-controlled reconnaissance robots capable of carrying out search-and-discovery missions in potentially hostile areas, to warn soldiers of the dangers ahead, and to protect them from mine fields, craters, trenches, hidden enemies or even greater threats such as chemical, biological or nuclear traps.

Eventually, the military hopes to arm the remote-controlled TUGVs with machine guns and other weapons, giving them the capacity to destroy enemy targets.

V.W.H. Campbell Jr., Post-Gazette Rep. John Murtha checks out the launchers on the "Gladiator" yesterday. Click photo for larger image.

Marine Corps Col. Terry Griffin, the project manager for the Department of Defense Robotic Systems Joint Project Office, called the Gladiator "the future of war-fighting.

"Remote combat task is to accomplish the mission and save friendly lives," Griffen told a crowd of BAE employees, politicians, CMU researchers, staff and reporters on hand for yesterday's demonstration. "We're going to do that with the Gladiator."

Although the vehicle, weighing nearly 3 tons, is large enough for combat, it appears remarkably friendly, looking and acting like an oversized remote-controlled toy.

Designed to fit into a military Humvee for transport, the Gladiator will be driven remotely by a soldier using a Sony PlayStation-like joystick. The soldier will wear a special helmet fitted with an eyepiece that serves as a camera, allowing the soldier to see what the robot sees, even though it could be miles away.

The latest Gladiator prototype has containers for hand grenades that can be used for clearing obstacles and creating a footpath on difficult terrain for soldiers following behind. It also features what looks like organ pipes to produce smoke, and it has a mount on top for a medium-size machine gun or multipurpose assault weapon.

The six prototypes, which will be tested under a variety of conditions before the Department of Defense orders up to 200 Gladiators, are the third stage of the robot's development process. A joint team of CMU researchers, consultants with military-experience and BAE engineers are now tweaking the Gladiator to a "bible-like" set of military requirements and expect to deliver the six prototypes to the Marine Corps by May 2007.

"The Marines are a tough customer. They have continually pushed them to make it easier to use," said Randy Bryant, dean of CMU's School of Computer Science.

Researchers at CMU's Robotics Institute and the National Robotics Engineering Consortium have been developing and fine-tuning the Gladiator since 2002, when several research teams and defense contractors began competing to present the Department of Defense with a specialized robotic vehicle to venture into unknown territory on battlefields and deliver real-time pictures to soldiers.

CMU began working with BAE in the most recent phase of the project -- needing an experienced defense contractor to build and manufacture the Gladiator.

Yesterday's demonstration was to showcase not just the the first unmanned ground vehicle used for reconnaissance, but also to highlight the region's economic-development success in winning a big military contract.

"We wanted to show the public what we were doing," said BAE spokesman Herb Muktarian, who noted that most of the 150 employees in the company's Fayette County plant are not yet working on the Gladiator but refurbishing Bradley combat vehicles.

Muktarian added that BAE is in "hiring mode," with plans to hire up to 50 more employees by the end of the year. The plant will start building the Gladiator prototypes sometime next year.