Russia begins trials of new generation Marker unmanned ground system

The Russian Federation has reportedly begun trials of its new Marker unmanned ground system, the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects announced on 29 June.

Final testing stage of the Marker robot are expected to take place in 2021.

The Marker unmanned ground system is the result of a joint project of the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects and the Android Technics Scientific Production Association.

The modular platform is deemed to become one of the key elements for the practice of joint operation of ground robots, unmanned aviation, and Special Operations forces.

Once finalized testing, the systems will be handed over to the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), according to Oleg Martyanov, who heads the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects’ National Center for the Development of Technologies and Basic Elements of Robotics.

“We plan to conduct the final testing on tasks, given to us back in 2019, next year,” Martyanov said.

“Summarizing how we managed to solve the issue of autonomy, group control, machine vision, target recognition, speed and precision of targeting, we will be ready to hand over the results of our work to the customer next year,” Martyanov said.

He also noted that he new voice control technology on robot control are being tested on the Marker robotic platform. “The Marker is learning to understand the received command and act, like a human,”  he said.

“Our goal is to teach the Marker to perform tasks on its own at a significant distance from the operator, at a distance determined by the robotic platform’s range,” he said, adding that the Marker is supposed to be able to update its route and target locations on its own, by launching a reconnaissance drone. The Marker can move up to 500 kilometers away,” he added.