Cavalier India Defence Training Academy

Chennai-based start-up Torus Robotics is manufacturing Unmanned Ground Vehicles to help ferry heavy loads for the Indian Army “You think of ‘unmanned’, and you think of drones, in the sky,” says 25-year-old Vibhakar Senthil. In Ambattur — widely regarded as the Detroit of India — his start-up Torus Robotics is set to change that, by making Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) for the Indian Army.  At the Aero India 2021 in Bengaluru, attended by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Torus Robotics signed an MOU with the Government, on the joint development of UGVs for the armed forces with BEML Limited.  “With BEML, we are now developing a high-altitude Logistics UGV with 750 kilograms payload. It will be an all-terrain vehicle to supply to and from bases [without the need of human presence] in bad weather conditions, for the Northern Command,” says Vibhakar. At university in SRM, Kattankulathur, Chennai, Vibhakar, with his classmates, M Vignesh and K Abbhi Vignesh, spent time researching...

Representative Image The Army is now undertaking a major study headed by a senior Lt-General on advanced "niche and disruptive warfare technologies", which range from drone swarms, robotics, lasers and loiter munitions to artificial intelligence, big data analysis and algorithmic warfare. Sources on Friday said the aim of the "holistic study", which comes amidst the ongoing military confrontation in eastern Ladakh with China, is to bolster the conventional war-fighting capabilities of the 13-lakh strong Army as well as prepare for "non-kinetic and non-combat" warfare in the years ahead. China, of course, has been assiduously working to develop futuristic warfare technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI)-powered lethal autonomous weapon systems, towards its overall endeavor to usher in a major "revolution in military affairs (RMA) with Chinese characteristics". Indian Army's new land warfare doctrine in 2018 had stressed the need to shar...