A startup with founders who previously served in the German military has created a product akin to an Amazon Firestick for legacy defense equipment, complete with a software stack. ARX Robotics claims its system can turn old equipment into AI-driven devices, such as autonomous-driving trucks.
Back in June this year ARX raised a €9 million seed funding round with the NATO Innovation Fund as lead investor, supported by Project A Ventures and Discovery Ventures.
ARX first came out with Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) and won a very large German military government contract (in this case for deployment in Ukraine).
It’s now launched ARX Mithra OS, an AI-based operating system that turns military vehicles into intelligent, interconnected autonomous units. The OS comes with hardware cameras and sensors that can be mounted onto military trucks or similar vehicles. The ARX Autonomy Kit also comes with over-the-air updates.
Marc Wietfeld, founder and CEO of Arx Robotics — also a former member of the German Armey — told TechCrunch that while the “battlefield of the future is digital” European and other Western armies continue to procure analog systems which have no connection to modern battlefield systems.
“We were building software and hardware for unmanned systems mainly on the ground. The thing is, we discovered the problem when being in the front line in Ukraine — but especially with the NATO armed forces — that the new assets of warfare such as drones, sensors, software, AI etc cannot interconnect or collaborate with our existing fleets.”
He pointed out that the German Armed Forces procured 3,500 Mercedes trucks but that “nothing is software capable. Nothing is interconnected. There’s not even a radio on it.”
“So we invented a sort of Amazon Firestick for existing legacy fleets of the NATO armed forces. So we are building robots, but we are also robotizing the existing fleets,” he said.
In the context of the war with Ukraine, it’s become clear that interconnected and autonomous systems in modern warfare are now utterly crucial. However, NATO has outdated arsenals and under-resourced European forces.
Wietfeld claims the startup has no known competitors in the space: “Instead of having unaffordable and time costly replacements, we want to upgrade the existing things. And it doesn’t depend if it’s the Toyotas of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, or the Leopard tank, or the Challenger tank of the UK armed forces. They need to speak one language and with open interfaces.”
The opportunity here is to turn vehicles into “wingmen”, with fleet intelligence, situational awareness, and other aspects of modern warfare.
“The increased willingness for military spending after the Russian invasion is wearing off, states are setting different priorities or simply are running out of budget. Therefore, it will be key to not only invest in new technologies but to update existing material and adapt it to modern warfare,” said GenLt A.D. Frank Leidenberger, CEO of BWI, the IT service provider of Bundeswehr, the German army, in a statement.
