Tel Aviv: Heven Drones and Roboteam, two Israeli companies teamed and offer a solution that enables a drone to bring a ground robot to the combat zone. Heven Drones, a fast growing drone company and Roboteam, a tactical ground robotic systems provider, jointly developed the solution.
The companies began working on the project responding to a specific requirement for defence and homeland security applications raised by a customer. They are now exploring additional use cases for land and air robots to maximize efficiency in other applications.
According to Bentzion Levinson, Heven Drone’s CEO, the new ‘flying robot’ can complete various tasks in the air and on the ground. “Our collaboration with Roboteam brings our vision one step closer with land and aerial robots working together to create a fully operational product that can complete tasks from the ground and the air.”
“This collaboration allows for one unmanned aerial & ground complete system for delivering a significant payload to the battlefield with Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) capabilities,” said Matan Shirvi, Roboteam’s COO. “You can fly when you want to fly, drive when you want to drive, with one controller, one software, and one radio – a single interface for maximizing the operational range in the most difficult environments and complex terrains.”
The aerial platform selected for the combined solution uses Heven-Drones’ H100 Robo Drone, a 71 kg Maximum take-off weight drone that lifts a weight up to 30 kg for 36 minutes over a distance of 10 km. In its flying robot configuration, Roboteam’s Micro Tactical Ground Robot (MTGR) mounts the H-100 to hop over obstacles to land on rooftops or rapidly deploy to a location where it performs its mission.
For this application, the drone is fitted with a 30kg kit that includes the MTGR, robot attachments, ramp, and toolbox supporting the MTGR, resulting in a first of a kind ‘flying robot’ that can be used which maximizes the time-to-lift capabilities of ground robots and flying robots.
-The writer is an Israel-based freelance journalist. The views expressed are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
