Ukrainian startups develop robots for the war against Russia

Andrii Denysenko, CEO of the design and production bureau UkrPrototyp, stands next to Odyssey, an 800-kilogram ground drone prototype, in a corn field in northern Ukraine, Friday, June 28, 2024. Facing labor shortages and uneven international aid, Ukraine is struggling to halt Russia’s gradual but fierce advance in the east, relying heavily on domestic innovation. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

NORTHERN UKRAINE (AP) — Struggling with labor shortages, overwhelming odds and uneven international aid, Ukraine hopes to find a strategic advantage over Russia in an abandoned warehouse or factory basement.

An ecosystem of laboratories in hundreds of secret workshops is using innovations to create a robot army that Ukraine will use to kill Russian troops and rescue its own wounded soldiers and civilians.

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Across Ukraine, defense startups – industry estimates say there are about 250 of them – are producing the killing machines at secret locations that typically resemble rural auto repair shops.

Employees of a startup run by entrepreneur Andrii Denysenko can assemble an unmanned ground vehicle called Odyssey in four days in a hall used by the company. The most important feature is the price: $35,000, or about 10 percent of the price of an imported model.

Denysenko asked the Associated Press not to publish details about the site to protect the infrastructure and the people working there.

The site is divided into small rooms for welding and body work, which includes making fiberglass truck beds, painting the vehicles gun green, and installing basic electronics, battery-powered motors, off-the-shelf cameras and thermal sensors.

The military is currently testing dozens of new unmanned aerial, ground and water vehicles manufactured by a sector of sophisticated start-ups whose production methods differ greatly from those of giant Western defense contractors.

In May, a fourth branch of the Ukrainian military – the Unmanned Systems Forces – joined the Army, Navy and Air Force.

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Engineers take inspiration from defense magazine articles or online videos to develop low-cost platforms. Weapons or smart components can be added later.

“We are fighting against a huge country, and it has no resource limits. We understand that we cannot sacrifice many human lives,” said Denysenko, who heads the defense startup UkrPrototyp. “War is mathematics.”

One of its drones, the car-sized Odyssey, spun on its axis last month, kicking up dust as it rumbled through a cornfield in the north of the country.

The 800-kilogram prototype, which looks like a small turretless tank with wheels on tracks, can travel up to 30 kilometers on a single charge from a battery the size of a small beer cooler.

The prototype functions as a rescue and supply platform, but can be modified to carry a remote-controlled heavy machine gun or mine-clearing charges.

“Robot squads … will become logistics equipment, tow trucks, minelayers and deminers, as well as self-destructive robots,” said a government fundraising page after the launch of Ukraine’s unmanned forces. “The first robots are already proving their effectiveness on the battlefield.”

Mykhailo Fedorov, deputy prime minister for digital transformation, is encouraging his citizens to take free online courses and assemble drones at home. He wants Ukrainians to build one million aircraft annually.

“There will be more of these soon,” it said on the donation page. “Many more.”

Denysenko’s company is working on projects such as a motorized exoskeleton designed to increase a soldier’s strength and carrier vehicles designed to carry a soldier’s equipment and even help him climb mountains. “We will do everything to develop unmanned technology even faster. (Russia’s) killers are using their soldiers as cannon fodder while we lose our best people,” Fedorov wrote in an online post.

Ukraine has semi-autonomous attack drones and defense drones equipped with artificial intelligence. The combination of inexpensive weapons and artificial intelligence worries many experts, who believe that inexpensive drones would enable their proliferation.

READ MORE: Ukrainian drone triggers explosions at Russian warehouse near border as war continues

Technology leaders at the United Nations and the Vatican fear that the use of drones and artificial intelligence in weapons could lower the inhibition threshold for killing and dramatically escalate conflicts.

Human Rights Watch and other international human rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision-making. This demand is also shared by the UN General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind.

“Cheaper drones will enable their proliferation,” says Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. “Their autonomy will also likely only increase.”

Left:
Andrii Denysenko, CEO of the design and production bureau UkrPrototyp, stands next to Odyssey, an 800-kilogram ground drone prototype, in a corn field in northern Ukraine, Friday, June 28, 2024. Facing labor shortages and uneven international aid, Ukraine is struggling to halt Russia’s gradual but fierce advance in the east, relying heavily on domestic innovation. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)