Oxford Dynamics, based in Harwell, Oxfordshire, has secured a £1 million contract with the MoD to design, develop and supply a robot named Strider, designed to operate in chemical, biological, or nuclear incidents, or in areas with fatal radiation.
The company began designing Strider, inspired by JARVIS from the Iron Man movies, in November and must deliver it to the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory by September for use by Defra.
It is envisioned that Strider could be deployed in hazardous environment scenarios and weould be used to retrieve contaminated objects and place them in sealed containers. Strider would also perform semi-autonomous tasks that could be challenging for humans in personal protective equipment.
It can also operate in difficult and unknown terrain, using infra-red, radar, and lidar (light detection and ranging) systems. The company plans to integrate its AVIS AI software into the robot, which stands for A Very Intelligent System.
Oxford Dynamics’ founder and director, Shefali Sharma, said: “If we can get these technologies into the hands of the people who genuinely need it… once it goes out there it’s absolutely going to be a dream come true as an entrepreneur [and] as a founder of the company.”
In a statement, Ewen Davies from Defra said: “It’s great to see concepts that we’ve discussed internally for a while rapidly taking shape in the form of a highly capable and flexible platform.”
