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45 Preventing them is expensive – installing a network of security cameras and someone to watch them can cost upwards of £12,500 per month, and the larger the project the higher the cost. Ziva Robotics is therefore aiming to provide a solution through the development of its Ziva UGV. It moves around on two wheels using momentum to control and stabilise their motion, driving its centre of mass away from its centre of rotation. It has been operated successfully in snow, mud and other conditions. The design and mobility system were created through a university project that required the development of a single self-stabilising wheel, after which Selby Cary (CEO of Ziva Robotics) and his co- founder decided to establish a start-up to commercialise it. “The drive mechanism is a bit like a hamster in a ball, leaning forward to move the ball,” he explains. “That means we don’t need to constantly drive the full mass of the vehicle, nor do we need a lot of torque to accelerate. “There were challenges with trials and iterations at first – it couldn’t carry the payload we wanted, or travel through the Scottish thistle lawns outside Edinburgh airport [one of the company’s first testing partners]. But we overcame them, and in the process found more ways to conserve power over long distances.” The Ziva has now completed six months of vehicle trials. Pre-orders of the system are available (leased through the company or certain security contractors) and it is priced to cut costs by around 10 times compared with a human security operator. “We’re in talks with some of the UK’s biggest construction companies, who want us to secure their sites autonomously, remotely and dynamically,” explains Cary. “Their high- risk assets, such as expensive materials or vehicles, are almost never in the same place from morning to afternoon, so by switching to an autonomous form of mobile CCTV they can keep tabs on those assets with minimal adjustment on their part, even as their site changes.” The Ziva has been designed to be sensor-agnostic so that, depending on the requirements of the site, it can be reconfigured to hold thermal or even gas detection sensors on its central frame/ body, as a replacement for or in UGVs | Insight Unmanned Systems Technology | April/May 2020