With development of the Spinner unmanned ground vehicle, an NREC-led team delivered technical breakthroughs in mobility, mission endurance and payload fraction.

DARPA created the Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle (UGCV) program to develop vehicle prototypes based on novel designs unrestrained by the need to accommodate human crews. The resulting prototypes demonstrate advanced configurations and technology that are applicable to UGV design programs for the US Army’s Future Combat System (FCS).

NREC with its three first level subcontractors (Boeing, Timoney Technology and DRS-TEM) developed and tested Spinner, a highly durable, invertible, six-wheel-drive, hybrid-powered vehicle that responds to the need of a UGCV to surmount challenging terrain obstacles, be easily teleoperated, and able to withstand an occasional moderate crash and rapidly recover.

Spinner’s impressive field results in the final phase of UGCV convinced DARPA to award a large follow-on program named UPI that integrates PerceptOR autonomy with the Spinner platform.