Ukraine’s rescue UGV gets better from soldiers, not AI

The biggest improvements to MAUL, a Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle built to carry wounded soldiers off the front line, have come from the troops using it rather than from artificial intelligence, the head of the company behind it said.

An unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV, is a remotely controlled or partly autonomous vehicle that moves on land without a crew aboard. Ukrainian forces use UGVs to deliver ammunition and supplies, lay mines and evacuate casualties through areas where Russian drones make it too dangerous to send medics or crewed vehicles.

Kostyantyn Hushcha, chief executive of AIDronesUA, wrote that feedback from soldiers on real missions can move quickly from a conversation with engineers to a new fix, a prototype and another round of testing. Much of that work, he said, is far more basic than AI and deals with how the vehicle moves, how the casualty is secured and protected, how the onboard systems fit together, and how fast the vehicle can be repaired and sent back out.

“These details may look less impressive than a new AI feature, but they are what determine whether an evacuation can actually be completed,” said Kostyantyn Hushcha, CEO of AIDronesUA.

Hushcha said the company is still looking at where autonomy and AI could improve MAUL, adding that any new technology has to make the platform more reliable, safer for the wounded soldier and better at completing the evacuation.

MAUL is a four-wheel-drive UGV with a combustion engine, designed from the start for casualty evacuation. The wounded soldier lies inside an armored capsule, held in place by three straps, while an interior camera lets operators watch the patient during the trip. The vehicle is 2.3 m (7.5 feet) long, carries up to 200 kg (440 pounds) and runs on airless metal wheels meant to survive mines and rough ground, and Ukraine’s 1st Medical Battalion says it can reach 70 km/h (43 mph).

The 1st Medical Battalion developed the original design, and Ukrainian manufacturer DevDroid later bought a license to build it, selling each unit for about $19,000.

MAUL drew wide attention in November 2025, when the battalion used it to rescue a soldier who had spent 33 days wounded behind Russian lines with a tourniquet on his injured leg. During the six-hour mission, the vehicle drove over an anti-personnel mine that blew off a wheel and then took direct hits from a Russian drone on the way back, but its armor held and the soldier reached Ukrainian medics, who stabilized him before his limb was later amputated.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian combat medics took MAUL to Sweden for the first time to show the Swedish Life Guards how UGVs are used to recover casualties.