The Office of Naval Research has unveiled what it believes to be the future of support for combat and military transport missions: a robot helicopter.

Using just a simple touchscreen tablet, any soldier can send the Autonomous Aerial Cargo/Utility System (AACUS) on missions that might be too perilous for humans.

"Out initiative is to try to find methods through which can have an entirely autonomous system do what a manned helicopter would do," Capt. Robert Palisin, assistant chief of naval research, said in the AACUS video demonstration.

Equipped with specialized on-board cameras, the AACUS can take off and land on its own by using laser sensors to define its flight path. The system can be used on a number of different helicopters, which would make deploying the system far less costly, according to the ONR.

Video: YouTube, ONR

A key feature of the system is that AACUS users don't need special training to use the system, making it ideal for potential deployment into the field in the near future. During testing, soldiers with no prior experience were able to successfully use the system within 15 minutes of trying it out.

"What we're developing here is a system that responds to a request in the field for supplies, develops its own route, flies there by itself without any oversight and comes in and selects its own landing sites," said AACUS program manager Max Snell. "This is a truly autonomous design."

Suggesting that the military is keeping an eye on commercial tech innovation, the ONR references the recent Amazon announcement regarding drone-assisted deliveries in its video demonstration. "We're tying to do the same thing, but I want to bring 5,000 pounds to a marine in the field of bullets or batteries or water in that same fashion," Snell said in the video.

And while the tablets featured in the video do appear to be commercial devices, the research team isn't linking the system to any one hardware or software manufacturer. "The user interface was designed to be platform agnostic, so it could be used with a broad array of aircrafts," Peter Vietti, ONR spokesperson, told Mashable.

Developed over the course of five years, AACUS has the ability to avoid ground-based and aerial obstacles such as telephone poles and wires. In addition to its autonomous abilities, AACUS can assist a human pilot attempting to land in challenging environments obscured by dust or heavy weather conditions.

Of course, as a unit of the military, the ultimate use of the AACUS won't be focused on convenience, but combat. "One of the longterm goals is probably to get this system to where it is able to do medical evacuation or casualty evacuation," Snell said.

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