Employment, Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Technology, Transport

Milrem Robotics said on Tuesday it was hiring leading engineers, especially in software development. Where currently up to 30 new engineers are needed, during next year, the company aims to hire altogether 50 new employees.

The company's expansion is fuelled by two main reasons: shifting its focus more on software development due to its leading role in more complex system integration projects, and two European Union grants received by he company of late.

"This summer, the European Commission announced that a consortium led by Milrem Robotics will be awarded 30.6 million euros from the Commission's European Defense Industrial Development Program (EDIDP) to develop a European standardized unmanned ground system (UGS).

During the project, titled Integrated Modular Unmanned Ground System (iMUGS), modular and scalable architecture for hybrid manned-unmanned systems will be developed to standardize a European wide ecosystem for aerial and ground platforms, command, control and communication equipment, sensors, payloads, and algorithms.

In addition to iMUGS, the company recently signed an agreement with the University of Tartu to develop autonomous off-road mobility for unmanned vehicles under a project backed by the EU.

The project that is aimed at the commercial market, specifically for aiding forest regeneration using Robotic Foresters, has four main goals: efficient detection and mitigation of natural obstacles found in forested areas; efficient operations of multiple UGS; safety of precision proximity operations within close range from obstacles; optimized collection and handling of onboard sensor data in combination with remote sensing.

In addition to EU projects, Milrem Robotics is establishing competence centers for robotics and unmanned system development. In addition to a well-established subsidiary in Sweden, another was created in Finland and plans are underway to expand to the Netherlands, where the company's key customer -- the Royal Netherlands Army -- is located.