Ukrainian start-ups create low-cost robots to fight Russia: ‘war is mathematics’
- Defence start-ups across Ukraine are creating the killing machines at secret locations that typically look like rural car repair shops
An ecosystem of laboratories in hundreds of secret workshops is leveraging innovation to create a robot army that Ukraine hopes will kill Russian troops and save its own wounded soldiers and civilians.
Defence start-ups across Ukraine – about 250 according to industry estimates – are creating the killing machines at secret locations that typically look like rural car repair shops.
Employees at a start-up run by entrepreneur Andrii Denysenko can put together an unstaffed ground vehicle called the Odyssey in four days at a shed used by the company. Its most important feature is the price tag: US$35,000, or roughly 10 per cent of the cost of an imported model.
Denysenko asked that Associated Press not publish details of the location to protect the infrastructure and the people working there.
The site is partitioned into small rooms for welding and body work. That includes making fibreglass cargo beds, spray-painting the vehicles gun-green and fitting basic electronics, battery-powered engines, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors.