Ukrainian start-ups to raise a low-cost robot army to fight Russia
The Hindu
Ukraine's defense startups are creating a robot army to save lives, with a $35,000 unmanned ground vehicle.
Struggling with manpower shortages, overwhelming odds and uneven international assistance, Ukraine hopes to find a strategic edge against Russia in an abandoned warehouse or a factory basement.
An ecosystem of laboratories in hundreds of secret workshops is leveraging innovation to create a robot army that Ukraine hopes will kill Russian troops and save its own wounded soldiers and civilians.
Defence startups across Ukraine — about 250 according to industry estimates — are creating the killing machines at secret locations that typically look like rural car repair shops.
Employees at a startup run by entrepreneur Andrii Denysenko can put together an unmanned ground vehicle called the Odyssey in four days at a shed used by the company.
Its most important feature is the price tag: $35,000, or roughly 10% of the cost of an imported model.
Mr. Denysenko asked not to publish details of the location.
The site is partitioned into small rooms for welding and bodywork. That includes making fibreglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors.