Endeavor, QinetiQ NA to proceed on $429M Army ground robot contract
By
Ross Wilkers
Endeavor Robotics and QinetiQ North America win places on a $429.1 million contract to build and deliver unmanned ground vehicles to the Army.
Endeavor Robotics and QinetiQ North America have won places on a potential nine-year, $429.1 million contract to build and deliver unmanned ground vehicles to the Army.
Technically, Endeavor and QNA were selected for the 10-month engineering and manufacturing development phase to each deliver two run-off robots for the Army to test and evaluate.
The Army will then evaluate the run-off test results to determine which company will proceed to the low-rate initial production phase of the Common Robotic System Individual program, the Defense Department said in its Friday contracts digest.
After the down-select, the Army will then convert the contract from multiple award to single award.
The Army envisions the CRS-I vehicles as being applicable for dismounted forces and having payloads for functions such as explosive ordnance disposal, plus detection of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear agents.
CRS-I robots should weigh no more than 25 pounds and also feature both a manipulator arm and sensors.
Endeavor and QNA will additionally deliver seven CRS-I systems and eight production representative systems for government tests and related activities during the engineering phase. Testing activities will center on areas such as system interoperability, security controls and cyber.