Europe's ground robots move from test to factory floor

In 2025, Ukraine delivered 15,000 unmanned ground vehicles to frontline units. The year before, the figure was 2,000. Within the 3rd Assault Brigade alone, ground robots now handle 80 per cent of logistics operations, hauling ammunition, food and medical supplies to positions that would otherwise require soldiers to move on foot under fire. Ukrainian military reporting puts the casualty reduction at up to 30 per cent in units using robotic resupply.

The numbers settled a question the defence industry had debated for years: ground robots were no longer experimental but load-bearing infrastructure, and the companies that built them were overwhelmingly European.

What ground robots actually do

The popular image of a military robot is a weapon on tracks. The reality in Ukraine is closer to a forklift that can survive shelling. The vast majority of UGV missions are logistics runs, casualty evacuations, mine clearance and forward sensor placement. Combat configurations exist, but they account for a fraction of deployments.

The design constraints for a logistics UGV are different from those for an armed platform. A resupply robot needs payload capacity, endurance, the ability to navigate broken terrain at night, and enough connectivity to work in a jammed electromagnetic environment. It does not necessarily need armour or a weapon mount.

Ukraine's 40-odd domestic UGV manufacturers, producing around 200 models, have learned this through iteration. Plans for 2026 call for more than 20,000 units. European manufacturers watched this feedback loop closely. Four companies, in particular, are now scaling production and competing for a market that barely existed three years ago.

Milrem Robotics: the incumbent

Milrem Robotics, founded in Tallinn in 2013, has the longest track record of any European UGV manufacturer. Its THeMIS platform is in service or part of robotics programmes across 19 countries, including eight NATO members. No other European ground robot comes close to that footprint.

In October 2025, Milrem announced it would deliver more than 150 THeMIS units to Ukraine in a Dutch-led defence initiative, coordinated with Dutch manufacturer VDL Defentec. At least 15 THeMIS vehicles were already operating in Ukraine by that point, having been deployed since 2022.

The scale of Milrem's ambitions extends well beyond Ukraine. In January 2024, the company secured the largest combat UGV contract in the western world: a deal worth more than $200 million with the UAE for 20 Type X Robotic Combat Vehicles and 40 THeMIS units. In May 2025, a Milrem-led consortium of 29 partners from 15 EU member states won nearly 50 million euros from the European Defence Fund for iMUGS2, a programme to develop next-generation interoperable unmanned ground systems.

But the ownership question hovers over all of this. EDGE Group, the Abu Dhabi-based defence conglomerate, acquired a majority stake in Milrem in February 2023. The company still operates from Tallinn with offices across Europe and the US, and the iMUGS2 programme is EU-funded. Yet the fact that Europe's most established ground robotics firm is majority-owned by a Gulf state defence group is not lost on policymakers who talk about sovereign European defence capabilities. Whether this matters in practice depends on whether European governments treat ownership as a procurement criterion.

ARX Robotics: the insurgent

If Milrem is the established player, ARX Robotics is the startup moving fastest. Founded in Munich in 2022 by three former Bundeswehr officers, the company raised 42 million euros in a Series A that closed in two tranches: 31 million led by HV Capital and Omnes Capital in April 2025, followed by an 11 million extension led by Speedinvest in July. The NATO Innovation Fund and Project A also participated.

ARX's core product is Gereon, a modular tracked UGV that can haul 500 kilograms across 40 kilometres. Hundreds of Gereon systems have been delivered to Ukraine since early 2025, forming what ARX calls the world's largest connected military robot fleet. Production is distributed across Europe and Ukraine, with local partners ramping output.

In March 2026, ARX unveiled Hector at BEDEX in Brussels. Hector is a medium-class wheeled UGV designed for a different problem: keeping pace with armoured formations. The combustion-engine variant can reach 120 km/h with a range of 350 kilometres. An electric variant trades range for reduced acoustic and thermal signatures. Hector can be driven by a crew to the edge of a mission area, then switched to teleoperation or supervised autonomy while the crew pulls back.

But the most consequential thing ARX may be building is neither platform but Mithra OS, the software layer that connects the fleet.

The software layer

Mithra is an AI-powered operating system that connects entire fleets of ground robots, delivers over-the-air updates, and lets operators configure vehicles for specific missions through a single interface. When ARX delivered hundreds of Gereon units to Ukraine, those vehicles were networked through Mithra, sharing data and adapting to tactical changes in real time.

This is where the ground robotics market starts to look like the smartphone market circa 2008. Hardware is becoming modular. The tracks, chassis, motors and payload bays are important, but they are increasingly commoditised. The value is migrating to the software layer that lets different robots work together and integrate into existing command-and-control structures.

ARX is not alone in seeing this. Quantum Systems, also based in Munich, has built MOSAIC UXS, a software suite that orchestrates manned and unmanned systems through a single interface. MOSAIC started as the coordination layer for Quantum Systems' drone fleet, which includes the Vector and Trinity platforms already in operational use. In March 2026, the company launched its MOSAIC Ground Autonomy Kit at LogNet in Koblenz and announced a partnership with Daimler Truck to integrate autonomous and teleoperated driving into military logistics vehicles.

The Daimler partnership signals something important about scale. A kit that can retrofit existing military trucks with autonomy functions has a vastly larger addressable market than any single UGV platform. Leader-follower convoys, where one crewed vehicle guides multiple unmanned trucks, address the personnel shortages that every European military faces.

The Mithra-MOSAIC competition extends beyond which software runs on which robot. It is about which platform becomes the standard middleware layer for European ground operations, the interface between a drone spotting a target and a ground robot acting on it. Whether Europe ends up with one dominant platform, several interoperable ones, or a fragmented collection of proprietary systems will depend on procurement decisions that have not yet been made.

Air meets ground

Quantum Systems' entry into ground robotics tells a broader story. The company is primarily a drone manufacturer. Its decision to build MANDRILL, unveiled at Enforce Tac in February 2026, reflects a bet that the market is consolidating around multi-domain vendors.

MANDRILL is designed around speed and payload rather than armour. Its dual-motor electric drivetrain pushes the platform to 100 km/h, with a payload capacity of up to 750 kilograms across ISR, electronic warfare, logistics and casualty evacuation missions. It comes in two lengths and can serve as a forward power source through bi-directional charging.

A brigade commander does not want separate contracts with a drone vendor and a ground robot vendor. They want one system where the drone identifies a target, the ground robot moves to respond, and both feed data into the same command picture. MOSAIC UXS is Quantum Systems' answer to that requirement. MANDRILL is the hardware that makes the ground half of the equation tangible.

Shark Robotics, based in La Rochelle, occupies a different niche. Founded in 2016, the company built its reputation with Colossus, a tracked robot originally designed for firefighting. In 2025, Shark Robotics delivered 40 Colossus robots to Ukraine's State Emergency Service under a 14.5 million euro contract funded by the French state through the Ukraine Fund. Ukrainian emergency service units using the robots reported that operational casualties dropped by a factor of three. The company has since expanded into military logistics with Barakuda, a tactical platform that carries 500 kilograms and tows a tonne. A strategic partnership with KNDS, the Franco-German defence group behind the Leopard 2 successor programme, gives Shark Robotics access to Europe's established armour supply chain.

What comes next

European governments are spending. The EU's EDIP programme allocated more than 700 million euros in March 2026 for production capacity in counter-drone systems, missiles and ammunition. Ground robotics procurement budgets are growing alongside these. Eurosatory 2026 in Paris will be the first major exhibition where every serious European ground robotics company has a production-ready platform to show, rather than a prototype.

Ukraine has settled whether ground robots will become standard military equipment. The remaining question is whether Europe will build an integrated ecosystem or a collection of incompatible national programmes. The software layer, not the hardware, will determine the answer. Milrem's iMUGS2 programme is explicitly designed around interoperability across 15 EU member states. ARX's Mithra and Quantum Systems' MOSAIC are commercial alternatives that could achieve the same result faster, if procurement officers choose them.

Among the companies we track on DefenceJobs.org, several ground robotics firms are actively hiring across engineering, software and operations roles. Browse open positions in hardware and systems engineering or explore our interactive map of European defence companies to find ground robotics firms near you.