Defense News Weekly recently featured Applied Research Associates, Inc.’s (ARA) autonomous tracked vehicle platform, Sapper. Unveiled at the 2024 AUSA Annual Meeting, Sapper is a high mobility, autonomous ready, tracked platform designed with a common deck, built with modular mission payloads in mind to meet a wide range of missions, including autonomous mine clearance.
“It’s all about keeping our soldiers safe in this case,” said Matt Fordham, ARA vice president and division manager. “So the dull, dirty, dangerous tasks are what we want to take on. And we can do that autonomously and meet the mission set so we can move our troops through in a safe way afterwards.”
In addition to Sapper, ARA highlighted other technologies at AUSA supporting the Army’s Human-Machine Integrated Formations Initiative, including ARA’s Mission Planning and Management System (MPMS), an innovative solution to coordinate autonomous systems, subsystems, and sensors. The Army’s Human-Machine Integration Initiative aims to integrate autonomy and robotic systems into formations in order to provide new capabilities that will help the Army achieve its goals for multi-domain operations.
Sapper is the result of ARA’s application of autonomy and advanced systems engineering to address threats in a rapidly evolving technological battle space. View the full Defense News Weekly segment here.
