Uncrewed ground vehicles traversing modern battlefields face a distinct obstacle that civilian self-driving cars never encounter. There are no rules of the road.
Defense manufacturers are pushing to build more autonomous war robots to reduce risks to soldiers, Business Insider reported. The number of military robots is soaring, particularly in Ukraine, where they fire weapons, attack positions, and carry wounded soldiers while operators remain at a safe distance.
Greater autonomy allows fewer soldiers to operate more vehicles and keeps troops farther from the front lines. It also lets robots keep moving when communications face disruptions from electronic warfare.
A chaotic battlefield, however, differs sharply from safe, well-mapped civilian roadways. Robots must traverse muddy tracks, forests, and dangerous terrain under the constant threat of enemy attacks.
Terrain, conditions, and targets shift constantly on the front lines. Speed limits do not exist, traffic remains entirely unpredictable, and safety guarantees are absent.
“Roads are structured,” said David Roberts, CEO of the British arm of German defense technology company ARX Robotics. “They’ve got rules. Roads are wide enough for cars to drive down. They have markings to tell a vehicle what to do and when to do it.”
ARX Robotics produces GEREON robots, which are autonomous systems used by Ukraine and procured by the United Kingdom. In war, rules simply do not apply in the same way.
“You don’t quite know if someone’s going to step out in front of you or be in the long grass in front,” Roberts told Business Insider. “It’s a very challenging environment in the first place to build autonomy.”
Mike McGinty, CEO of British firm Digital Concepts Engineering, whose X-series ground robots have been procured by the British Army, highlighted similar contrasts. A civilian street features a flat, guaranteed surface that remains marked, signed, and unchanging from day to day.
“True autonomy is an extremely hard problem on cross-country ground,” McGinty said. “If you see a line on the ground, is it a hole, a log, a burn mark, a shadow, a crocodile, a person?”
Developing autonomous uncrewed ground vehicles for war is much harder than building self-driving civilian taxis. Autonomy spans from following preset routes to independently traveling toward a destination.
Capabilities in Ukraine have grown as artificial intelligence helps robots move past Russian electronic warfare. Most robots currently deployed in Ukraine rely on remote control, featuring autonomy only in niche areas like following waypoints if operator connections drop.
The GEREON robots run on Mithra, a software layer connecting sensors, artificial intelligence, and autonomy functions. This supervised autonomy allows a single soldier to task and oversee multiple systems simultaneously.
ARX’s robots already follow waypoints, detect people, avoid collisions, and execute safety stops. The next step involves mission-level autonomy, with battlefield management systems directing vehicles where to go within the next year or two.
Digital Concepts Engineering equips its robots with a Marionette kit enabling remote control and supporting third-party software features. Full autonomy remains a difficult technological step for the firm.
Ground robot autonomy in Ukraine remains in early development, though frontline units want more systems to protect soldiers. Oleksandr Yabchanka, head of robotic systems for Ukraine’s Da Vinci Wolves Battalion, told Business Insider that the future of uncrewed systems lies in autonomy.
Ukraine’s state-backed innovation platform Brave1 runs grant programs calling for autonomous logistics robots that can independently return to base. Integrating artificial intelligence into aerial drones, fixed weapons, and ground robots aims to let a single soldier oversee multiple pieces of equipment simultaneously.
