Urban Obstacle Clearance Mission Payload

In the same way that traditional armoured vehicles need support to overcome various deliberately emplaced and natural obstacles, so too will uncrewed and robotic vehicles as they come into service on the battlefield. They may need this to support their own freedom of manoeuvre, or to provide a route opening and clearance effect for others.

The Urban Obstacle Clearance Mission Payload is based on Pearson Engineering’s decades of design to provide armoured vehicles with manoeuvre support capability. It features a multi-purpose V-shaped obstacle reduction blade and a manipulator arm capable of both robust and precision tasks that can accept different types of obstacle engaging tools. In their form as ‘Front-End Equipment’, both types of equipment for traditional armoured vehicles have been provided extensively to Armed Forces around the world and are now adapted to maximise the capability and potential offered by uncrewed platforms.

Uncrewed platforms offer advantages not only in protecting soldiers by removing them from harm’s way. They also offer a different approach to engineering capability by allowing features to be positioned in ways that better use centres of gravity and other geometry to provide an enhanced effect.

Pearson Engineering’s mission payloads build on our existing approach to providing scalable and rapidly interchangeable capability. The urban obstacle payload can be quickly swapped with our new minefield breaching mission payload, and others, to re-role the robotic combat vehicle. Interchangeability is facilitated by quick release fastenings and adjustable jacks that require no tools to operate and enable a swap in under 30 minutes.

An intuitive Operator Control Unit (OCU) with enhanced depth perception capability is provided to enable the remote operation of RCV-Pioneer. The OCU includes a digital twin to enable training and familiarisation in advance of deployment.

The Urban Obstacle Clearance Pack has been successfully trialled in the United States at the US Army Manoeuvre Support Sustainment and Protection Integration Experiments (MSSPIX) 2021 and 2022, as well as at the Robotic Combat Vehicle Experiment in Fort Hood in 2023.