MoD announces winner of robot challenge

The Ministry of Defence has announced the winner of its Grand Challenge competition to produce a vehicle capable of identifying threats encountered by UK troops on current operations.

Team Stellar beat off six other hopefuls, whittled down from 23, in the final competition set in Copehill Down, a military training facility on Salisbury Plain.

Stellar's Saturn unmanned ground vehicle works with two other types of unmanned aerial vehicle to gather data about the battlefield from a variety of perspectives. The system is managed by a control station that combines visual, thermal and radar data.

Stellar Research has designed a system that relies on three separate, autonomous platforms: an unmanned ground vehicle, up to six medium-level unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and one high-level UAV. The intention is to build a system that can be used to analyse the battlefield from a macro and micro level.

For more photos, see the full story on sister site silicon.com