Ukrainian Startups Revolutionize Warfare with Low-Cost Robots
9 Sources
9 Sources
[1]
Ukrainian startups create low-cost robots
NORTHERN UKRAINE (AP) - 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: USD35,000, or roughly 10 per cent of the cost of an imported model. Denysenko asked that The Associated Press not publish details of the location to protect the infrastructure and the people working there. The site is partitioned into small rooms for welding and body work. That includes making fiberglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors. The military is assessing dozens of new unmanned air, ground and marine vehicles produced by the no-frills startup sector, whose production methods are far removed from giant Western defence companies'. A fourth branch of Ukraine's military -- the Unmanned Systems Forces -- joined the army, navy and air force in May. Engineers take inspiration from articles in defence magazines or online videos to produce cut-price platforms. Weapons or smart components can be added later. "We are fighting a huge country, and they don't have any resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend a lot of human lives," said Denysenko, who heads the defence startup UkrPrototyp. "War is mathematics." One of its drones, the car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis and kicked up dust as it rumbled forward in a cornfield in the north of the country last month. The 800-kilogramme (1,750-pound) prototype that looks like a small, turretless tank with its wheels on tracks can travel up to 30 kilometres (18.5 miles) on one charge of a battery the size of a small beer cooler. The prototype acts as a rescue-and-supply platform but can be modified to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or sling mine-clearing charges. "Squads of robots ... will become logistics devices, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots," a government fundraising page said after the launch of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. "The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield." Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister for digital transformation, is encouraging citizens to take free online courses and assemble aerial drones at home. He wants Ukrainians to make a million of flying machines a year. "There will be more of them soon," the fundraising page said. "Many more." Denysenko's company is working on projects including a motorized exoskeleton that would boost a soldier's strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier's equipment and even help them up an incline. "We will do everything to make unmanned technologies develop even faster. (Russia's) murderers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best people," Fedorov wrote in an online post. Ukraine has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is worrying many experts who say low-cost drones will enable their proliferation. Technology leaders to the United Nations and the Vatican worry that the use of drones and AI in weapons could reduce the barrier to killing and dramatically escalate conflicts. Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision making, a concern echoed by the UN General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind. "Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation," said Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "Their autonomy is also only likely to increase."
[2]
From basement to battlefield: Ukrainian startups create low-cost robots to fight Russia
NORTHERN UKRAINE (AP) -- 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. Defense 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. Denysenko asked that The Associated Press not publish details of the location to protect the infrastructure and the people working there. The site is partitioned into small rooms for welding and body work. That includes making fiberglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors. The military is assessing dozens of new unmanned air, ground and marine vehicles produced by the no-frills startup sector, whose production methods are far removed from giant Western defense companies'. A fourth branch of Ukraine's military -- the Unmanned Systems Forces -- joined the army, navy and air force in May. Engineers take inspiration from articles in defense magazines or online videos to produce cut-price platforms. Weapons or smart components can be added later. "We are fighting a huge country, and they don't have any resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend a lot of human lives," said Denysenko, who heads the defense startup UkrPrototyp. "War is mathematics." One of its drones, the car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis and kicked up dust as it rumbled forward in a cornfield in the north of the country last month. The 800-kilogram (1,750-pound) prototype that looks like a small, turretless tank with its wheels on tracks can travel up to 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) on one charge of a battery the size of a small beer cooler. The prototype acts as a rescue-and-supply platform but can be modified to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or sling mine-clearing charges. "Squads of robots ... will become logistics devices, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots," a government fundraising page said after the launch of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. "The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield." Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister for digital transformation, is encouraging citizens to take free online courses and assemble aerial drones at home. He wants Ukrainians to make a million of flying machines a year. "There will be more of them soon," the fundraising page said. "Many more." Denysenko's company is working on projects including a motorized exoskeleton that would boost a soldier's strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier's equipment and even help them up an incline. "We will do everything to make unmanned technologies develop even faster. (Russia's) murderers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best people," Fedorov wrote in an online post. Ukraine has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is worrying many experts who say low-cost drones will enable their proliferation. Technology leaders to the United Nations and the Vatican worry that the use of drones and AI in weapons could reduce the barrier to killing and dramatically escalate conflicts. Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision making, a concern echoed by the U.N. General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind. "Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation," said Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "Their autonomy is also only likely to increase."
[3]
Ukrainian startups are creating a low-cost robot army to fight Russia
NORTHERN UKRAINE -- 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. Defense 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. Denysenko asked that The Associated Press not publish details of the location to protect the infrastructure and the people working there. The site is partitioned into small rooms for welding and body work. That includes making fiberglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors. The military is assessing dozens of new unmanned air, ground and marine vehicles produced by the no-frills startup sector, whose production methods are far removed from giant Western defense companies'. A fourth branch of Ukraine's military -- the Unmanned Systems Forces -- joined the army, navy and air force in May. Engineers take inspiration from articles in defense magazines or online videos to produce cut-price platforms. Weapons or smart components can be added later. "We are fighting a huge country, and they don't have any resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend a lot of human lives," said Denysenko, who heads the defense startup UkrPrototyp. "War is mathematics." One of its drones, the car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis and kicked up dust as it rumbled forward in a cornfield in the north of the country last month. The 800-kilogram (1,750-pound) prototype that looks like a small, turretless tank with its wheels on tracks can travel up to 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) on one charge of a battery the size of a small beer cooler. The prototype acts as a rescue-and-supply platform but can be modified to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or sling mine-clearing charges. "Squads of robots ... will become logistics devices, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots," a government fundraising page said after the launch of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. "The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield." Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister for digital transformation, is encouraging citizens to take free online courses and assemble aerial drones at home. He wants Ukrainians to make a million of flying machines a year. "There will be more of them soon," the fundraising page said. "Many more." Denysenko's company is working on projects including a motorized exoskeleton that would boost a soldier's strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier's equipment and even help them up an incline. "We will do everything to make unmanned technologies develop even faster. (Russia's) murderers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best people," Fedorov wrote in an online post. Ukraine has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is worrying many experts who say low-cost drones will enable their proliferation. Technology leaders to the United Nations and the Vatican worry that the use of drones and AI in weapons could reduce the barrier to killing and dramatically escalate conflicts. Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision making, a concern echoed by the U.N. General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind. "Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation," said Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "Their autonomy is also only likely to increase."
[4]
From basement to battlefield: Ukrainian startups create low-cost robots to fight Russia
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. Defense 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. Denysenko asked that The Associated Press not publish details of the location to protect the infrastructure and the people working there. The site is partitioned into small rooms for welding and body work. That includes making fiberglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors. The military is assessing dozens of new unmanned air, ground and marine vehicles produced by the no-frills startup sector, whose production methods are far removed from giant Western defense companies'. A fourth branch of Ukraine's military -- the Unmanned Systems Forces -- joined the army, navy and air force in May. Engineers take inspiration from articles in defense magazines or online videos to produce cut-price platforms. Weapons or smart components can be added later. "We are fighting a huge country, and they don't have any resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend a lot of human lives," said Denysenko, who heads the defense startup UkrPrototyp. "War is mathematics." One of its drones, the car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis and kicked up dust as it rumbled forward in a cornfield in the north of the country last month. The 800-kilogram (1,750-pound) prototype that looks like a small, turretless tank with its wheels on tracks can travel up to 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) on one charge of a battery the size of a small beer cooler. The prototype acts as a rescue-and-supply platform but can be modified to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or sling mine-clearing charges. "Squads of robots ... will become logistics devices, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots," a government fundraising page said after the launch of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. "The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield." Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister for digital transformation, is encouraging citizens to take free online courses and assemble aerial drones at home. He wants Ukrainians to make a million of flying machines a year. "There will be more of them soon," the fundraising page said. "Many more." Denysenko's company is working on projects including a motorized exoskeleton that would boost a soldier's strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier's equipment and even help them up an incline. "We will do everything to make unmanned technologies develop even faster. (Russia's) murderers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best people," Fedorov wrote in an online post. Ukraine has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is worrying many experts who say low-cost drones will enable their proliferation. Technology leaders to the United Nations and the Vatican worry that the use of drones and AI in weapons could reduce the barrier to killing and dramatically escalate conflicts. Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision making, a concern echoed by the U.N. General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind. "Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation," said Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "Their autonomy is also only likely to increase."
[5]
From basement to battlefield: Ukrainian startups create low-cost robots to fight Russia
NORTHERN UKRAINE -- 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. Defense 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. Denysenko asked that The Associated Press not publish details of the location to protect the infrastructure and the people working there. The site is partitioned into small rooms for welding and body work. That includes making fiberglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors. The military is assessing dozens of new unmanned air, ground and marine vehicles produced by the no-frills startup sector, whose production methods are far removed from giant Western defense companies'. A fourth branch of Ukraine's military -- the Unmanned Systems Forces -- joined the army, navy and air force in May. Engineers take inspiration from articles in defense magazines or online videos to produce cut-price platforms. Weapons or smart components can be added later. "We are fighting a huge country, and they don't have any resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend a lot of human lives," said Denysenko, who heads the defense startup UkrPrototyp. "War is mathematics." One of its drones, the car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis and kicked up dust as it rumbled forward in a cornfield in the north of the country last month. The 800-kilogram (1,750-pound) prototype that looks like a small, turretless tank with its wheels on tracks can travel up to 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) on one charge of a battery the size of a small beer cooler. The prototype acts as a rescue-and-supply platform but can be modified to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or sling mine-clearing charges. "Squads of robots ... will become logistics devices, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots," a government fundraising page said after the launch of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. "The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield." Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister for digital transformation, is encouraging citizens to take free online courses and assemble aerial drones at home. He wants Ukrainians to make a million of flying machines a year. "There will be more of them soon," the fundraising page said. "Many more." Denysenko's company is working on projects including a motorized exoskeleton that would boost a soldier's strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier's equipment and even help them up an incline. "We will do everything to make unmanned technologies develop even faster. (Russia's) murderers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best people," Fedorov wrote in an online post. Ukraine has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is worrying many experts who say low-cost drones will enable their proliferation. Technology leaders to the United Nations and the Vatican worry that the use of drones and AI in weapons could reduce the barrier to killing and dramatically escalate conflicts. Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision making, a concern echoed by the U.N. General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind. "Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation," said Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "Their autonomy is also only likely to increase."
[6]
From basement to battlefield: Ukrainian startups create low-cost robots to fight Russia
NORTHERN UKRAINE -- 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. Defense 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. Denysenko asked that The Associated Press not publish details of the location to protect the infrastructure and the people working there. The site is partitioned into small rooms for welding and body work. That includes making fiberglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors. The military is assessing dozens of new unmanned air, ground and marine vehicles produced by the no-frills startup sector, whose production methods are far removed from giant Western defense companies'. A fourth branch of Ukraine's military -- the Unmanned Systems Forces -- joined the army, navy and air force in May. Engineers take inspiration from articles in defense magazines or online videos to produce cut-price platforms. Weapons or smart components can be added later. "We are fighting a huge country, and they don't have any resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend a lot of human lives," said Denysenko, who heads the defense startup UkrPrototyp. "War is mathematics." One of its drones, the car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis and kicked up dust as it rumbled forward in a cornfield in the north of the country last month. The 800-kilogram (1,750-pound) prototype that looks like a small, turretless tank with its wheels on tracks can travel up to 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) on one charge of a battery the size of a small beer cooler. The prototype acts as a rescue-and-supply platform but can be modified to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or sling mine-clearing charges. "Squads of robots ... will become logistics devices, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots," a government fundraising page said after the launch of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. "The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield." Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister for digital transformation, is encouraging citizens to take free online courses and assemble aerial drones at home. He wants Ukrainians to make a million of flying machines a year. "There will be more of them soon," the fundraising page said. "Many more." Denysenko's company is working on projects including a motorized exoskeleton that would boost a soldier's strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier's equipment and even help them up an incline. "We will do everything to make unmanned technologies develop even faster. (Russia's) murderers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best people," Fedorov wrote in an online post. Ukraine has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is worrying many experts who say low-cost drones will enable their proliferation. Technology leaders to the United Nations and the Vatican worry that the use of drones and AI in weapons could reduce the barrier to killing and dramatically escalate conflicts. Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision making, a concern echoed by the U.N. General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind. "Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation," said Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "Their autonomy is also only likely to increase."
[7]
From basement to battlefield: Ukrainian startups create low-cost robots to fight Russia
NORTHERN UKRAINE -- 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. Defense 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. Denysenko asked that The Associated Press not publish details of the location to protect the infrastructure and the people working there. The site is partitioned into small rooms for welding and body work. That includes making fiberglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors. The military is assessing dozens of new unmanned air, ground and marine vehicles produced by the no-frills startup sector, whose production methods are far removed from giant Western defense companies'. A fourth branch of Ukraine's military -- the Unmanned Systems Forces -- joined the army, navy and air force in May. Engineers take inspiration from articles in defense magazines or online videos to produce cut-price platforms. Weapons or smart components can be added later. "We are fighting a huge country, and they don't have any resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend a lot of human lives," said Denysenko, who heads the defense startup UkrPrototyp. "War is mathematics." One of its drones, the car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis and kicked up dust as it rumbled forward in a cornfield in the north of the country last month. The 800-kilogram (1,750-pound) prototype that looks like a small, turretless tank with its wheels on tracks can travel up to 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) on one charge of a battery the size of a small beer cooler. The prototype acts as a rescue-and-supply platform but can be modified to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or sling mine-clearing charges. "Squads of robots ... will become logistics devices, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots," a government fundraising page said after the launch of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. "The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield." Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister for digital transformation, is encouraging citizens to take free online courses and assemble aerial drones at home. He wants Ukrainians to make a million of flying machines a year. "There will be more of them soon," the fundraising page said. "Many more." Denysenko's company is working on projects including a motorized exoskeleton that would boost a soldier's strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier's equipment and even help them up an incline. "We will do everything to make unmanned technologies develop even faster. (Russia's) murderers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best people," Fedorov wrote in an online post. Ukraine has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is worrying many experts who say low-cost drones will enable their proliferation. Technology leaders to the United Nations and the Vatican worry that the use of drones and AI in weapons could reduce the barrier to killing and dramatically escalate conflicts. Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision making, a concern echoed by the U.N. General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind. "Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation," said Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "Their autonomy is also only likely to increase."
[8]
From Basement to Battlefield: Ukrainian Startups Create Low-Cost Robots to Fight Russia
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. Defense 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. Denysenko asked that The Associated Press not publish details of the location to protect the infrastructure and the people working there. The site is partitioned into small rooms for welding and body work. That includes making fiberglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors. The military is assessing dozens of new unmanned air, ground and marine vehicles produced by the no-frills startup sector, whose production methods are far removed from giant Western defense companies'. A fourth branch of Ukraine's military -- the Unmanned Systems Forces -- joined the army, navy and air force in May. Engineers take inspiration from articles in defense magazines or online videos to produce cut-price platforms. Weapons or smart components can be added later. "We are fighting a huge country, and they don't have any resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend a lot of human lives," said Denysenko, who heads the defense startup UkrPrototyp. "War is mathematics." One of its drones, the car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis and kicked up dust as it rumbled forward in a cornfield in the north of the country last month. The 800-kilogram (1,750-pound) prototype that looks like a small, turretless tank with its wheels on tracks can travel up to 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) on one charge of a battery the size of a small beer cooler. The prototype acts as a rescue-and-supply platform but can be modified to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or sling mine-clearing charges. "Squads of robots ... will become logistics devices, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots," a government fundraising page said after the launch of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. "The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield." Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister for digital transformation, is encouraging citizens to take free online courses and assemble aerial drones at home. He wants Ukrainians to make a million of flying machines a year. "There will be more of them soon," the fundraising page said. "Many more." Denysenko's company is working on projects including a motorized exoskeleton that would boost a soldier's strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier's equipment and even help them up an incline. "We will do everything to make unmanned technologies develop even faster. (Russia's) murderers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best people," Fedorov wrote in an online post. Ukraine has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is worrying many experts who say low-cost drones will enable their proliferation. Technology leaders to the United Nations and the Vatican worry that the use of drones and AI in weapons could reduce the barrier to killing and dramatically escalate conflicts. Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision making, a concern echoed by the U.N. General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind. "Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation," said Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "Their autonomy is also only likely to increase." Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
[9]
From basement to battlefield: Ukrainian startups create low-cost robots to fight Russia
NORTHERN UKRAINE (AP) -- 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. Defense 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. Denysenko asked that The Associated Press not publish details of the location to protect the infrastructure and the people working there. The site is partitioned into small rooms for welding and body work. That includes making fiberglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors. The military is assessing dozens of new unmanned air, ground and marine vehicles produced by the no-frills startup sector, whose production methods are far removed from giant Western defense companies'. A fourth branch of Ukraine's military -- the Unmanned Systems Forces -- joined the army, navy and air force in May. Engineers take inspiration from articles in defense magazines or online videos to produce cut-price platforms. Weapons or smart components can be added later. "We are fighting a huge country, and they don't have any resource limits. We understand that we cannot spend a lot of human lives," said Denysenko, who heads the defense startup UkrPrototyp. "War is mathematics." One of its drones, the car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis and kicked up dust as it rumbled forward in a cornfield in the north of the country last month. The 800-kilogram (1,750-pound) prototype that looks like a small, turretless tank with its wheels on tracks can travel up to 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) on one charge of a battery the size of a small beer cooler. The prototype acts as a rescue-and-supply platform but can be modified to carry a remotely operated heavy machine gun or sling mine-clearing charges. "Squads of robots ... will become logistics devices, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots," a government fundraising page said after the launch of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. "The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield." Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister for digital transformation, is encouraging citizens to take free online courses and assemble aerial drones at home. He wants Ukrainians to make a million of flying machines a year. "There will be more of them soon," the fundraising page said. "Many more." Denysenko's company is working on projects including a motorized exoskeleton that would boost a soldier's strength and carrier vehicles to transport a soldier's equipment and even help them up an incline. "We will do everything to make unmanned technologies develop even faster. (Russia's) murderers use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best people," Fedorov wrote in an online post. Ukraine has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is worrying many experts who say low-cost drones will enable their proliferation. Technology leaders to the United Nations and the Vatican worry that the use of drones and AI in weapons could reduce the barrier to killing and dramatically escalate conflicts. Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision making, a concern echoed by the U.N. General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind. "Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation," said Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "Their autonomy is also only likely to increase." ___ Follow AP's coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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Ukrainian tech companies are developing affordable robotic solutions to aid in the war effort against Russia. These innovations range from surveillance drones to unmanned ground vehicles, showcasing the country's technological resilience.
The Rise of Ukrainian Tech in Wartime
In the midst of the ongoing conflict with Russia, Ukrainian startups are emerging as unexpected heroes on the technological front. These innovative companies are developing low-cost robotic solutions to support their country's defense efforts, demonstrating the power of ingenuity in times of crisis
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.From Basements to Battlefields
Many of these startups operate from makeshift workspaces, including basements and garages, transforming them into hubs of innovation. Despite the challenging circumstances, these entrepreneurs are driven by a sense of patriotic duty and the urgent need for technological solutions in warfare
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.Diverse Range of Robotic Solutions
The robotic innovations coming out of Ukraine span a wide spectrum of military applications. These include:
- Surveillance drones for reconnaissance missions
- Unmanned ground vehicles for transporting supplies and evacuating wounded soldiers
- AI-powered systems for threat detection and analysis
These low-cost alternatives to expensive military equipment are proving to be game-changers on the battlefield
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.Adapting Consumer Tech for Military Use
One of the key strategies employed by these startups is the adaptation of consumer-grade technology for military purposes. By repurposing commercially available components, they are able to create cost-effective solutions that can be rapidly deployed in the field. This approach not only reduces production costs but also allows for quick iterations and improvements based on real-world feedback
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.Government Support and International Collaboration
The Ukrainian government has recognized the potential of these homegrown innovations and is actively supporting their development. Additionally, international partnerships are forming, with some Ukrainian startups collaborating with defense contractors and tech companies from allied nations. This global cooperation is helping to accelerate the development and deployment of these robotic solutions
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Ethical Considerations and Future Implications
As these robotic technologies become more prevalent on the battlefield, they raise important ethical questions about the future of warfare. The development of autonomous systems and AI-powered robots is prompting discussions about the role of human decision-making in combat situations and the potential risks associated with increased automation in military operations.
Impact on Ukraine's Tech Ecosystem
The war has paradoxically given a boost to Ukraine's technology sector, particularly in the field of robotics and AI. This surge in innovation is not only contributing to the country's defense but also positioning Ukraine as a potential leader in military technology for the future. The expertise gained during this period could have far-reaching implications for the country's economic development in the post-war era.
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