The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) awarded Milrem Robotics a contract to provide robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) Concept Development and Experimentation (CD&E) services to the Italian Army.

The scope of the multi-year campaign is to update the Italian army’s RAS strategy and outline an implementation roadmap for the introduction of unmanned systems and related technology into service.

Milrem Robotics will support the Italian Army in developing a clear path to how RAS technology, systems and architectures can generate operational advantages and ground armed forces benefits when operating in urbanised environments.

“Milrem is proud to be selected as the partner for supporting the Italian Armed Forces in one of the most advanced and challenging RAS CD&E initiatives in the world,” said Kuldar Väärsi, CEO of Milrem Robotics. “This program is well in line with our core competencies as a system integrator for autonomous and robotic technologies,”

The Italian CD&E level of ambition is to exploit prototyping skills and technological capabilities to demonstrate future operational benefits an, to identify short to mid-term (5-15 years) transformational initiatives for the development of operational RAS capabilities.

The scope of the co-operation is to capture, analyse and deliver decision support data from all stages of the experimentation process, stemming from field activities, war-gaming, modelling and simulation, innovative technologies, that will respond to the challenges set forth by the problem statement.

The deliverables of the contract include a Command and Control (C2) System, an autonomy engine, systems integration of third party capabilities, several unmanned ground and air vehicles and a variety of sensors and effectors.

Milrem Robotics is known for its THeMIS and Multiscope Unmanned Ground Vehicles and the Type-X Robotic Combat Vehicle. The THeMIS supports dismounted troops while the  Multiscope  is intended for civilian use such as forestry and firefighting.   The Type-X Robotic Combat Vehicle is a wingman for mechanised units.

Milrem also leads a consortium that was recently awarded €30.6M from the European Commission’s European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP) to develop a European standardized unmanned ground system (UGS).

During the project, titled iMUGS, modular and scalable architecture for hybrid manned-unmanned systems will be developed to standardize a European wide ecosystem.

Milrem first demonstrated its autonomous THeMIS unmanned ground vehicle to the Italian Army in 2020 when it launched a new programme to assess and analyse the implementation of intelligent systems into the army’s doctrine.

During the robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) capability spotlight for the Italian Army,  it presented the THeMIS unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) enhanced with Milrem’s Intelligent Functions Integration Kit (MIFIK) that features autonomous functions such as waypoint navigation and follow me. MIFIK can also be integrated onto other unmanned vehicles providing the same capabilities.

Together with the live demonstration Milrem Robotics also launched its Intelligent Systems Implementation Analysis and Assessment (IS-IA²) program designed to help armed forces implement intelligent systems into their capabilities.

IS-IA² is comprised of three steps: analysing the requirements of the armed forces, implementing the tailor-made RAS solution with the integration of provided and/or customised technologies for the armed forces by the local industry, and evaluating the outcome.

“IS-IA² provides armed forces support from initial planning to full implementation and post implementation analyses of intelligent and robotic systems with (NATO standard) concept development and experimentation methodologies. This enables customers to get support and solutions for any step in the process,” said Cpt (ret) Jüri Pajuste, the Defence Research and Development Director at Milrem.