NREC designed and developed the Crusher vehicle to support the UPI program’s rigorous field experimentation schedule.

The UPI program features quarterly field experiments that assess the capabilities of large scale, unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) operating autonomously in a wide range of complex, off-road terrains. UPI’s aggressive mobility, autonomy and mission performance objectives required two additional test platforms that could accommodate a variety of mission payloads and state of the art autonomy technology.

Crusher represents the next generation of the original Spinner platform, the world’s first greater-than-6-ton, cross-country UGV designed from the ground up. Crusher offers more mobility, reliability, maintainability and flexibility than Spinner, at 29 percent less weight.