The US Army has awarded the National Robotics Engineering Centre (NREC) a US$14.4m contract to build a fully autonomous battlefield robot.

NREC (based at Carnegie Mellon University) will update an existing 6.5t, six-wheel drive unmanned ground vehicle, the Crusher, which uses advanced processing to navigate difficult terrain.

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NREC will improve the vehicle’s manoeuvring capabilities before integrating it with existing military organisations.

Last month, a team from Carnegie Mellon won the DARPA Urban Challenge, with their robotic sport utility vehicle nicknamed “Boss”.

By staff writer