The University of Manchester is developing robots for urban warfare. Dubbed Tumbleweed, they are being developed by a team lead by Dr Bill Crowther from the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE), there are two machines: a helicopter and a ground vehicle.

The flyer is powered by has six rotors mounted at three different angles, an arrangement dubbed HexRotor, and is powered by Li-ion cells.

“The intention is that the robot is ultimately of sufficient low cost to be expendable,” said Crowther. “We are looking to achieve this in part by keeping the advanced computing and image processing hardware back at the base station rather than on the vehicle.”

Pre-programmed using GPS to follow a course, the air vehicle is autonomous.

“A key challenge is making the technology sufficiently autonomous that it does not require high levels of skill and attention to operate it,” said Crowther. “Current systems often take two or three specially trained soldiers to operate them and can’t be used by front line troops where the information is most needed.”



It is designed to seek out roadside bombs, weapons and armed militia, then beam back images.

“Back at base, specially developed recognition software will allow the team to define a threat against a library rather than simply highlighting a possible threat in an image,” said the University.

It is envisaged that clusters of the helicopters would be sent out together and work collaboratively to detect danger. “Each robot would have a mass under 5kg, be small enough to fit through a doorway and have the ability to operate for up to 20 minutes,” said Manchester.

University of Manchester Intellectual Property (UMIP) is now handling a patent which covers multi-rotor vehicles and includes HexRotor.

See the Videos

Simulation video of Tumbleweed Air Vehicle (from vehicle).
Simulation video of Tumbleweed Air Vehicle (third party view).
Selection of photographs showing Tumbleweed robots during last minute testing.
Video download by clicking here.

The Tumbleweed ground vehicle is designed to me manoeuvrable in cluttered urban environments. It navigates autonomously using GPS and has sonar to avoid obstacles.

“It has three sets of wheels and each of these can be steered, enabling the vehicle to change directions while keeping the onboard surveillance camera pointing in the same direction,” said the University.

MACE engineers collaborated with the University of Leeds, Manchester-based AV-i, MBDA and BAE Systems.