Endeavor Robotics has provided quick, off-the-shelf solutions to the U.S. Army for many years, but the Boston-based company is now gaining significant traction at a time when the service is looking to streamline its petting zoo of ground robots. By necessity, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army scrambled to buy unmanned ground vehicles that could provide a level of standoff between soldiers and the dangers faced on the battlefield. This resulted in the procurement of roughly 7,000 UGVs from Talons to PackBots to Dragon Runners. Endeavor, which launched as a private company in 2016 but previously existed as iRobot's defense and security business, supplied PackBots to the service, as well as a few other small UGVs. It gained more traction in October 2017, when the company secured a contract to provide the service a platform it calls Centaur: a medium-sized robot (less than 164 pounds) to provide standoff capability to identify and neutralize explosive hazards. That served as the groundwork for what the company hopes will be major expansion in the Army, not only delivering an array of systems but supporting a strategy of interoperability.
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