Stratom launches Summit Off-Road Autonomy Platform

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Stratom Summit includes all of the functionality for a robotics control software solution. | Credit: Stratom

Stratom launched its Summit Off-Road Autonomy Platform, a highly configurable modular software system that can be easily customized for various unmanned vehicles, applications, operations and environmental conditions.

Leveraging Stratom’s proven off-road and complex terrain capabilities, Summit delivers flexible, tailored and cost-saving autonomy solutions for a variety of industries and applications in challenging or dangerous environments.

The system is the first of its kind to combine:

• Summit Core: Stratom’s autonomous vehicle software platform, which provides the essential framework required to implement unmanned systems.
  Summit Behaviors: Summit’s unique modular software framework empowers users to choose autonomous system behaviors, such as perception, route planning and accessory control, that address specific real-world challenges.
• Summit Services: Stratom’s team of software service and robotics integration experts implement and optimize systems to quickly meet specific requirements, including any necessary hardware, autonomy sensing and computing components.

“Successfully developing off-road unmanned vehicles since 2012, Stratom understands that the right autonomous solutions can boost operating efficiency, safety and profitability of your organization,” said Mark Gordon, president and CEO of Stratom. “With Summit, Stratom is eliminating the barriers to entry for those industries that have been held back due to cost and resource limitations or challenging terrain and environments. For these organizations, it is now possible to easily implement a customized autonomous system that will offload monotonous, difficult or dangerous tasks, freeing up people to focus on what people do best.”

Gordon went on to say: “with Summit, we’ve built an autonomy platform with a strong baseline architecture. We’ve leveraged Summit internally on our released products, as well as working with customers looking to make their vehicles autonomous in difficult off-road environments.”

The Stratom mobile ordinance pallet is designed to improve logistics for US military in the field. | Credit: Stratom

This is the first software-only solution that Stratom has released. Their prior products have been complete robotic solutions or add-on hard components.

Stratom has derived from all of their experience building and supporting military-grade solutions in the field. Gordon believes this is an inflection point for Stratom from a software perspective, as Summit is already being used for internal programs. The company is looking to leverage that experience and help new customers in different environments build and deliver custom off-road mobile robotic solutions.

Whether in heavy industry, mining, agriculture, construction, manufacturing or other applications that require operation beyond pristine warehouses or smooth terrain, Stratom’s Summit platform delivers:

• Future-ready scalability: Easily customize the system to add or adjust behaviors to address specific needs now and in the future.
• Rapid deployment: Accelerate projects with full system implementation up and running in weeks, not months or even years.
• Managed and open architecture: The fully managed software stack works seamlessly with virtually any existing system already in place.
• Integrated system design: System deployment to dissimilar platforms within the same fleet enables various vehicles, machinery and robotics to communicate with one another, share mapping data and leverage autonomy enhancements.

“Designing an autonomous system from scratch is not realistic for most organizations, which is why Stratom invested thousands of hours of system development time and resources creating the Summit platform — so you don’t have to,” said Andrew Lycas, principal roboticist at Stratom. “We make it possible to easily upgrade or implement a new autonomous system of vehicles, machinery or robotics for outdoor and off-road applications in the most easy and efficient way possible, now and as your needs evolve.”

Editors Note: Stratom CEO Mark Gordon was a guest on Episode 51 of The Robot Report podcast.