AUSTIN, Texas (April 27, 2021) — Austin startup Apptronik has created a robotic arm resulting from an innovative project model to increase how fast artillery pieces fire and are resupplied. The company will demonstrate the potentially game-changing arm on April 30 at its Stonehollow Drive facility.
Austin-based Army Applications Laboratory (AAL), a subordinate organization of Army Futures Command (AFC), ran the Army’s first-ever cohort program for solution development, from which Apptronik was selected to continue development of its prototype. The cohort brought six tech companies together to solve one of the service’s highest-priority problems: how to resupply self-propelled cannons faster. AAL’s approaches to incentivize industry to work with the Army have resulted in record-breaking numbers of applications from businesses like Apptronik, and a number of Army firsts. AAL’s Field Artillery Autonomous Resupply cohort model is one of the ways that the Army Futures Command engages tech companies to find solutions for the Army’s modernization efforts.