MIRA offers Guardsman for patrol role

Vehicle engineering consultancy MIRA has developed an autonomous patrol capability that can be fitted to any vehicle capable of accommodating its components.

The new system, known as the MIRA Autonomous Control Equipment (MACE) Guardsman, is a platform-agnostic solution and is, at present, fitted to a Land Rover Defender vehicle. Company representatives told IHS Jane's that the reason for this was that the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), which had received demonstrations of the system, were longstanding users of the vehicle.

Guardsman builds on the company's experience in fitting its MACE technology to Land Rovers under the British Army's project 'Panama'. In this configuration, known as Pathfinder, the vehicles are controlled via a teleoperation system or waypoint navigation and are fitted with ground-penetrating radar (GPR) in order to provide a route-proving capability in Afghanistan. The MACE system also features 'come to me' and 'follow me' control commands.

The solution can also incorporate a range of additional sensors and has been presented fitted with a Raytheon BBN Technologies Boomerang sniper detection system.