Photos: Robot warriors engage in battle

The Grand Challenge is a science and technology competition set up by the Ministry of Defence to address military challenges faced by the UK armed forces. The challenge is to create a system with a high degree of autonomy that can detect, identify, locate and report a comprehensive range of military threats.

Eleven teams have been selected to go through to the final which includes a physical demonstration at Copehill Down, a specially constructed village built for urban warfare training, in August.

The Mindsheet team have developed sensory systems to negotiate the debris of urban terrains. What the unit sees is what its operator will see, although the unit will automatically travel through a set series of waypoints, leaving the operator free to assess what they see through the robot's eyes.