Along with increasing innovations in frontier engineering sciences, the advancement in Robotic Autonomous Systems (RAS) has brought about a new horizon in earthmoving processes for construction. In the military domain, there is also an increasing interest in utilising RAS technologies. In particular, ground-based forces are frequently called upon to conduct earthmoving tasks as part of military operations, tasks which could be partially or fully aided by the employment of RAS technologies. There have been rapid developments in military construction automation using high-mobility ground-based platforms, human-machine and machine-machine interfaces, teleoperation and control systems, data transmission systems, machine perception and manipulation capabilities, as well as advances in networked robotics and cyberphysical systems. Given these developments it is timely to undertake a comprehensive overview on the topic of interest to the research community and the authority. This paper presents an overview of the RAS development for platform-centric earthworks together with an analysis of the technical feasibility, maturity, key technical challenges, and future directions for the application of RAS technologies to earthmoving tasks of interest to the army. KeywordsMilitary earthmoving; robotic autonomous systems; technology/system readiness; mode of control 2.2.1Perception Robotic perception represents the sensing and data processing required of an autonomous system to acquire and represent knowledge about its environment. That is, to obtain measurements using various appropriate sensors, to extract meaningful information from those measurements, and to represent the environment in the form of a model that can be updated and interrogated.

The recently developed Life-Space-Foam approach to goal-directed human action deals with individual actor dynamics. This paper applies the model to characterize the dynamics of co-action by two or more actors. This dynamics is modelled by: (i) a two-term joint action (including cognitive/motivatonal potential and kinetic energy), and (ii) its associated adaptive path integral, representing an infinitedimensional neural network. Its feedback adaptation loop has been derived from Bernstein's concepts of sensory corrections loop in human motor control and Brooks' subsumption architectures in robotics. Potential applications of the proposed model in human-robot interaction research are discussed.Recently [1] we have suggested a generalized motivational/cognitive action, generating Lewinian force-fields [2, 3] on smooth manifolds. On the other hand, cognitive neuroscience investigations, including fMRI studies of human co-action, suggest that cognitive and neural processes supporting co-action include joint attention, action observation, task sharing, and action coordination [4,5,6,7]. For example, when two actors are given a joint control task (e.g., tracking a moving target on screen) and potentially conflicting controls (e.g., one person in charge of acceleration, the other -deceleration), their joint performance depends on how well they can anticipate each other's actions. In particular, better coordination is achieved when individuals receive real-time feedback about the timing of each other's actions [7].

Amongst increasing innovations in frontier engineering sciences, the advancements in Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) has brought about a new horizon in construction applications. There is evidence of increasing interest in RAS technologies in the civil construction sector being reflected in construction efforts of many military forces. In particular, Army or ground-based military forces are frequently called upon to conduct construction tasks as part of military operations, tasks which could be partially or fully aided by the employment of RAS technologies. Along with recent advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) and cyberphysical system infrastructure, it is essential to examine the current technical feasibility, maturity, affordability, as well as the challenges and future directions of the adoption and application of RAS to military construction. This paper presents a comprehensive survey and provides a contemporary and industry-independent overview on the state-ofthe-art of construction automation used in defence, spanning current world's best practice through to that which is predicted over the coming years.

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