Ukrainian startup is building a cheap robotic army to fight Russia: NPR

Northern Ukraine – Suffering from manpower shortages, overwhelming odds, and asymmetric global backup, Ukraine hopes to find a strategic edge against Russia in a disused bank or manufacturing unit basement.

An ecosystem of labs in several unpublicized workshops is leveraging the innovation to create a robotic army that Ukraine hopes will kill Russian soldiers and save its own wounded infantrymen and civilians.

Security startups across Ukraine – about 250 according to trade estimates – are developing killing machines in undisclosed locations that typically look like rural automobile repair stores.

Employees at a startup run by entrepreneur Andrey Denisenko can build an unmanned farmland vehicle called the Odyssey in four days at a fraction of the cost the company spends. Its maximum notable quality is the cost tag: $35,000, or plus or minus 10% of the price of the imported type.

Denisenko requested that the relevant press no longer present highlights of the site in order to provide security to the infrastructure and the crowds moving there.

The web page is divided into small rooms for welding and frame painting. This comes with building fiberglass shipment beds, spray-painting cars gun-green, and building plain electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors.

The military is evaluating dozens of virgin unmanned wind, farmland and marine cars produced through the no-frills startup sector, whose manufacturing style is largely a departure from giant Western defense companies.

Serhiy, chief engineer of the design and manufacturing bureau “UKRPrototype”, works on a Type AA car-sized 800-kilogram (1,750-pound) prototype drone in the north of Ukraine on June 27, 2024.

Anton Shtuka/AP

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Anton Shtuka/AP

The fourth division of Ukraine’s military – the Unmanned Technologies Force – joined the military, the Army and Wind Drive in May.

Engineers take inspiration from articles in defense magazines or online movies to create low-cost platforms. Nearby guns or interesting elements can also be added.

“We are fighting a huge country, and they have no resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend too many human lives,” said Denisenko, the head of security startup UkrPrototyp. “War is mathematics.”

One of its drones, a car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis and kicked up dust as it moved across a corn field north of the pastoral extreme event.

The 800 kg (1,750 lb) prototype, which resembles a small, turretless tank with wheels on tracks, can move up to 30 kilometers (18.5 mi) on a single charge of a battery the size of a small beer cooler.

The prototype serves as a rescue-and-resupply platform, although it can also be modified to hold a remotely operated weighted system gun or sling mine-clearing charges.

“Squads of robots… will become logistics equipment, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots,” a central authority fundraising web page later said of the foundation of Ukraine’s Unmanned Tech Forces. “The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield.”

Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov is encouraging voters to hold separate online sessions and create aerial drones at home for the virtual transition. He wants the Ukrainians to put together one million gliding machines for some time.

“There will be more of them soon,” the fundraising web page noted. “Too much.”

Denisenko’s company is working on tasks including a motorized exoskeleton that could boost a soldier’s strength and service cars to move a soldier’s equipment or even assist them in moving . “We will do everything we can to develop unmanned technologies even faster,” Fedorov wrote in a web-based publication. “(Russia’s) killers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we use our best people. “

Ukraine has AI-equipped semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone guns, and the combo of cheap guns and synthetic perception devices worries many professionals, who say cheap drones will allow their proliferation.

Leaders of the United Nations and the Vatican fear that the use of drones and AI in guns could hinder killing and dramatically escalate conflict.

Human Rights Overseas and other global rights teams are calling for the abolition of guns that take out human willpower. At the UN General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind reiterated this priority. Is.

“Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation,” said Toby Walsh, a teacher of artificial intelligence at the University of South Wales in Sydney, Australia. “Their autonomy is also likely to increase.”