XTEK signs MOUs with Milrem Robotics, Athena AI
Australia’s XTEK has signed two agreements with Milrem Robotics in Europe and Athena Artificial Intelligence in Australia. The deal with Milrem Robotics will see the two companies collaborate to develop a composite material ballistic armour solution for Milrem Robotics’ THeMIS UGV, by combining Milrem’s requirements for a composite material ballistic armour solution and the design capabilities and potential manufacturing solutions offered by XTEK in the ballistic field.
Milrem Robotics, based in Tallinn, Estonia, is Europe’s leading robotics and autonomous systems developer whose defence sector products include the THeMIS UGV and Type X RCV. XTEK and Milrem Robotics agree to share technical information from both parties for the enhancement of the agreement, with Milrem developing requirements and specifications for armour protection of the THeMIS UGV, while XTEK will design the armour components and prototypes. Milrem will undertake the operational testing of the armour, with XTEK undertaking the ballistic and armour testing of the components.
This agreement follows an initial MoU between the two parties, announced 17 December 2020, in which a strategic relationship was made to support XTEK’s actionable intelligence solutions, representing a strong validation of XTEK’s unmanned vehicle industry knowledge, capabilities and networks. The MoU was signed to appointed XTEK to act as Milrem Robotics’ UGV exclusive distributor in Australia and New Zealand.
The agreement with Australia’s Athena will allow both parties to collaborate to develop a fully sovereign end to end Robotic Autonomous Systems & Artificial Intelligence (RASAI) enabled sensor to effector capability. This will allow platform agnostic AI enhanced common control of unmanned systems. Preliminary integrations have been demonstrated with Athena AI, XTatlas and the AeroVironment Puma AE with i45 electro-optical sensor payloads. Athena AI, based in Queensland, Australia, is engaged in the business of developing and manufacturing Artificial Intelligence enabled target recognition, geospatial analysis and machine learning decision support. More specifically, the company produces multi sensor computer vision data fusion with machine learning for battle tracking, grouping information, supporting targeting such as weapons effects and linking detections to suitable effectors. It also has experience in middleware services for providing a server based solution as part of a C4I battle network.
Read the article in Asia Pacific Defence Reporter