Lanka Robotics

Lanka Robotics is a Ukrainian defence-tech startup, registered in the summer of 2025, that is betting on software rather than steel. Its team has worked on unmanned ground vehicles for roughly three years, with co-founders who built robotic systems before the full-scale invasion. The company’s hardware calling card is Mamut, a logistics UGV with a 200 kg payload that is undergoing proving-ground tests and is listed on the Brave1 marketplace. But Mamut is mostly a testbed: the flagship product is an autonomy stack meant to be dropped into ground robots that other manufacturers cannot make smart on their own.

The problem Lanka is chasing is the one that quietly kills expensive ground drones at the front. UGVs depend on a constant radio or Starlink link, and when that link drops in a treeline the machine simply stops and is lost. That product, the Lanka UGV Copilot, is pitched as platform-agnostic: a computer-vision module that uses visual navigation to keep a vehicle moving on its own for short stretches without a connection, avoid obstacles, and return to safety if the signal is lost. Further capabilities the team describes as in development include route retracing, mine detection, and AI-driven defence against FPV drones. The pitch against Western alternatives is price: foreign closed autonomy systems are cited at $100,000 to $200,000, where Lanka frames a domestic package, UGV included, as costing far less.

The company is early but visibly inside Ukraine’s defence-tech machine. It drew positive notices at the Darkstar bootcamp in late 2025, has its autonomy system in testing with military units after partnerships with the makers of two other UGVs, and was awaiting a grant under the Brave1 general track. It is raising around $1 million to grow the team and accelerate R&D. The autonomy-first strategy puts it in the same conversation as Ukrainian ground-robot builders such as Tencore and Frontline , though Lanka’s wager is that the brain, not the chassis, is where the field is short.