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Here’s what Overland AI’s ULTRA can do
TransportationGet your news fromINTERESTING ENGINEERINGSeattle-based Overland AI has won a $20 million contract under the US Army’s Engineer Autonomous Breaching Capability initiative, which aims to use robots to clear obstacles and minefields so fewer combat engineers are exposed to enemy fire.
Clearing a path through minefields and barbed wire, with the enemy watching, is one of the most dangerous jobs in combat. The US Army wants robots to take the lead.
Seattle’s Overland AI just won a 20 million dollar contract for the Army’s Engineer Autonomous Breaching Capability program. It’s one of four companies picked, along with Caterpillar, Forterra and IDV.
Its flagship robot is ULTRA, a fully autonomous off-road vehicle. It carries 1,000 pounds, tops out at 35 miles per hour and has a 100-mile cruising range.
It needs no driver, no GPS and no prior map. Its OverDrive software reads the terrain in real time, even at night or in rain and fog.
That software was honed in DARPA’s RACER off-road autonomy program, and one soldier can task a whole team of these robots from a single screen.
And it has already breached. At the African Lion exercise in Morocco this spring, one ULTRA fired a rocket-launched line charge, normally carried by two soldiers, to clear a concertina wire obstacle. A second ULTRA covered it with a remote weapon station.
Next, Overland’s team will fold ground robots, drones and electronic warfare gear into one breaching package, and soldiers will test it in early 2027.
Three days after the Army award, Overland announced another 14.3 million dollar deal to turn commercial heavy trucks into driverless breachers fitted with mine rollers.
The plan: send the robots into the breach first, and keep the soldiers behind them.
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