A Russian Startup Shows Off a Fleet of Autonomous Rovers

At a Moscow tech fair, a little-known robotics company rolled out a series of self-driving rovers designed for jobs ranging from logistics to farming — another sign of how fast unmanned systems are scaling worldwide.

At the Skolkovo Innovation Center in Moscow, the international expo “Unmanned Systems: Technologies of the Future” turned into a showcase for Dronshub, a Russian developer that revealed five new ground-based autonomous rovers. The lineup is aimed at tasks as varied as logistics, agriculture, industrial inspection, and security patrols.

One highlight was the “Cargo Unit,” an unmanned vehicle that can haul up to 150 kilograms. The machine already had a soft launch of sorts: last spring, it carried baskets of flowers around the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNKh), handing out greetings to women on International Women’s Day.

In the “Energy” zone, the company showed off the “Legat Patrol,” a rover designed to inspect industrial equipment and monitor air quality. For agriculture, the crawler-type “Region” rover and the “Territory” platform — capable of handling up to a ton of cargo — demonstrated field-ready capabilities. Dronshub also displayed two multipurpose units, the “Frame” and the “Piranha,” geared toward inspection and security tasks.

All of the rovers connect to cloud-based services for remote control and monitoring. In total, Dronshub is developing 11 different rover models, with load capacities ranging from 50 to 800 kilograms. The company says the machines are built on proprietary engineering and server-side software.

Russia’s robotics startups are increasingly trying to carve out space in the global race for unmanned technologies — a field where logistics, agriculture, and energy management are quickly becoming proving grounds for automation.