Milrem Robotics, the leader of a consortium composed of several major European defence, communication and cybersecurity companies and high technology SMEs will be presenting the European standard unmanned ground system development project iMUGS at SMi Group’s Military Robotics and Autonomous Systems conference, taking place as a virtual event on the 12th and 13th April 2021.
iMUGS or the Integrated Modular Unmanned Ground System is a 32,6 MEUR project funded from the European Commission’s European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP). Its goal is to develop a standard European unmanned ground system (EUGS). The EUGS will be based on Milrem Robotics’ THeMIS unmanned ground vehicle and a specific list of payloads.
The THeMIS has already been acquired by eleven countries, seven of which are members of NATO: the US, the UK, Germany, Norway, France, Estonia and the Netherlands, whose Royal Army is Milrem Robotics’ key customer with six purchased systems.
The THeMIS has proven itself in Mali during the French lead counter-terrorism operation Barkhane where it was deployed for 12 months. During the deployment, the THeMIS traversed 1200 km in one of the world’s harshest terrains of lava rock soil and climates climbing to 50 degrees Celsius in the shade. The UGV was operational for over 330 hours.
At the conference, Gen (Ret) Riho Terras, Chairman of Milrem Robotics’ Supervisory Board will be presenting the development project.
“Europe must act quickly and develop, standardize and implement disruptive technologies to close the technological gap emerging between us and our adversary’s,” Terras said.
The requirements for the EUGS have been set by seven EU member states: Estonia, the leader of the project, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, and Spain.
iMUGS is a cooperation between 13 parties: Milrem Robotics (project coordinator), GT Cyber Technologies, Safran Electronics & Defense, NEXTER Systems, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Diehl Defence, Bittium, Insta DefSec, (Un)Manned, dotOcean, Latvijas Mobilais Telefons, GMV Aerospace and Defence, and Royal Military Academy of Belgium.
Milrem Robotics is the European leading robotics and autonomous systems developer. The company has two offices in Estonia, one in Sweden and Finland and shortly one in the Netherlands.
For those interested in attending the conference, register at http://www.robotics-autonomous.com/milrempr.