Robotics
Defense Robotics Prototyping
Raonebytes prototypes rugged robotic systems for inspection, field testing, training and research use cases: unmanned ground platforms, underwater ROVs, UAVs, control electronics, sensing and telemetry. The work is dual-use engineering services for authorised defence and public-safety programmes, and it is scoped to platforms, ruggedisation, autonomy, sensing and communications. We do not work on weapons, munitions, targeting or any payload whose purpose is to cause harm.
The short answer
Defence robotics prototyping covers unmanned ground and underwater vehicles, ISR sensor payloads, ruggedised control and comms electronics, and the test equipment that supports them. A rugged robotic platform prototype typically runs $25,000 to $45,000, an autonomous vehicle or AGV-class build $40,000 to $75,000 or more, and a UAV $15,000 to $35,000, on an 8 to 14 week timeline that extends when environmental testing and sealed-enclosure work are in scope. Raonebytes is an India-based engineering firm, so export-control and jurisdiction questions (ITAR and EAR in the US, SCOMET in India, equivalents elsewhere) have to be settled before any technical data changes hands.
Common builds
UGV and inspection platforms
Underwater ROVs and pressure housings
ISR sensor payloads
Ruggedised comms and control electronics
Field test and evaluation rigs
What Raonebytes delivers
Robotic platforms
Mechanical design, drivetrain and thruster selection, power electronics, sensing and control architecture, sized against a stated mission profile rather than a generic spec.
Ruggedised electronics
Custom PCBs with wide-input power, transient and reverse-polarity protection, harsh-environment connectors and EMI-aware layout, plus the harnessing and sealing that go with them.
Autonomy and sensing
ROS 2 based navigation, LiDAR, camera, IMU, GNSS and encoder integration, GNSS-denied odometry, and low-latency teleoperation with a defined loss-of-link behaviour.
Test and handoff package
Environmental and functional test procedures, results against selected MIL-STD-810 methods where a lab is engaged, BOM, wiring and firmware documentation, and manufacturing handoff outputs.
What makes this hard
The constraints that decide whether a design survives contact with the real world.
Ruggedisation is a design decision, not a finishing step
Shock, vibration, thermal cycling and ingress protection change board stack-up, connector choice, potting, fastener strategy and mass distribution. Trying to add them after a bench prototype works usually means a mechanical redesign and a second board spin, which is why environmental targets belong in the first requirements review.
Heat has nowhere to go in a sealed enclosure
Once an enclosure is sealed to IP67 or pressure-rated for depth, there is no air exchange, so every watt has to conduct through the chassis wall. Motor drivers, compute modules and radios then need deliberate conduction paths, gap pads and thermal budgeting, and in subsea housings the surrounding water becomes the main heat sink.
Navigation without a reliable GNSS fix
Indoors, underground, underwater and under jamming or multipath, a GNSS position is unavailable or untrustworthy. Practical systems fuse inertial, wheel or thruster odometry, visual odometry and LiDAR SLAM, and the honest constraint is that inertial drift grows with time, so the design has to define how long a mission can run before an absolute fix or landmark update is required.
Links that must degrade predictably
Teleoperation over mesh radio or an ROV tether faces packet loss, latency spikes and complete dropouts, and an operator judges the system by glass-to-glass latency rather than raw throughput. The design has to specify what the vehicle does when the link goes: hold, stop safely, return along its inbound path, or surface, with that behaviour tested rather than assumed.
Standards and protocols that shape the design
Identifying these early is what keeps them from forcing a redesign later.
- MIL-STD-810 (environmental engineering)
- A tailored methodology of test methods covering shock, vibration, high and low temperature, thermal shock, humidity, altitude, rain, and sand and dust, selected to match a life-cycle environmental profile. It is not a pass/fail certification scheme, so the accurate statement about any design is that it was tested to selected MIL-STD-810 methods at defined levels, never that it is MIL-STD-810 certified.
- MIL-STD-461 (electromagnetic interference)
- Defines conducted and radiated emissions and susceptibility limits (CE102, RE102, CS114, RS103 and related requirements) for equipment on military platforms. It drives filtering, shielding, cable screening and grounding decisions early, because retrofitting EMI fixes after layout usually costs a board revision.
- IEC 60529 ingress protection and pressure housings
- IP67 and IP68 describe dust and immersion performance, with IP68 depth and duration defined by the manufacturer rather than fixed by the standard. Beyond a metre or so of water an IP rating stops being the useful number, and the design moves to a pressure housing rated in bar or metres of depth with O-ring seals, penetrators and a proven test pressure.
- MIL-DTL-38999 and harsh-environment interconnect
- MIL-DTL-38999 circular connectors (bayonet, threaded and breech coupling series) provide sealed, shielded, vibration-tolerant connections with scoop-proof shells and defined contact arrangements. They are heavy and expensive relative to commercial parts, so connector selection is a real trade against mass, panel space and unit cost that should be made before enclosure design freezes.
- UN 38.3 lithium battery transport testing
- Lithium cells and packs must pass UN 38.3 (altitude simulation, thermal cycling, vibration, shock, external short circuit, impact or crush, overcharge and forced discharge) before they can be shipped. Any prototype that has to travel to a trial site needs the pack, its protection circuitry and its shipping arrangements planned around this, along with the usual field safety questions of fusing, isolation and safe charging.
Typical technology stack
Platform and structure
Machined and folded aluminium chassis, sealed housings with O-ring grooves and cable penetrators, and buoyancy or ballast design on underwater vehicles. Mass, centre of gravity and mounting stiffness are treated as engineering outputs because they set vibration response and endurance.
Compute
STM32 or similar microcontrollers for real-time motor control, safety interlocks and sensor timing, with an NVIDIA Jetson or x86 class module for perception and autonomy. Splitting hard real-time behaviour away from the higher-level stack keeps a heavy perception load from disturbing the control loop.
Autonomy software
ROS 2 over DDS for the autonomy stack, with ros2_control for actuators, Nav2 for path planning, and micro-ROS or a plain serial protocol bridging to the real-time microcontroller. The parts that must not miss a deadline stay off the general-purpose scheduler.
Navigation and sensing
Tactical or industrial grade IMUs fused with wheel, thruster or visual odometry, LiDAR or stereo depth for mapping, and GNSS where it is available and trusted. ISR payloads typically add gimballed EO or thermal imaging, with the pointing, stabilisation and data path designed alongside the camera choice.
Communications
Mesh radios for ground vehicles, hardware-encoded H.264 or H.265 video over UDP-based transport for low glass-to-glass latency, and a fibre or twisted-pair tether for ROVs where RF simply does not propagate. Command, telemetry and video are budgeted separately so a video stall never blocks a control message.
Power
Wide-input DC-DC conversion tolerant of the vehicle bus and of transients, protected lithium packs with a BMS, and separated rails for motors, compute and radios. Load-dump, inrush and stall currents are measured on the bench rather than taken from datasheet figures.
Why this matters
Rugged robotics programmes rarely fail on the idea. They fail when a bench prototype meets vibration, water, heat, EMI or a link that drops, because those constraints were treated as a later phase. Raonebytes designs the mechanical platform, electronics, firmware and autonomy stack together, which is what makes the awkward interactions between them show up during the prototype instead of during a field trial. Our published work covers exactly this ground: a tethered underwater ROV with HD video, a surface control station and a manipulator arm; an autonomous robot platform taken from CAD through fabrication to mapping, navigation and field testing; a telepresence robot combining autonomous navigation with a live remote link; and a semi-autonomous quadcopter with GPS waypoint navigation and a return-to-home failsafe. On the compliance side we are direct rather than reassuring: Raonebytes is an India-based engineering firm and holds no ITAR registration, facility security clearance, DFARS or NIST 800-171 attestation, so export-controlled and classified work has to be scoped, and in many cases redirected, before technical data is shared.
Frequently asked questions
What does a rugged robotics prototype cost?
A robotic platform prototype typically runs $25,000 to $45,000, an autonomous vehicle or AGV-class build $40,000 to $75,000 or more, and a UAV $15,000 to $35,000. Ruggedisation sits at the upper end of those ranges because sealed enclosures, harsh-environment connectors and protected power add both design time and unit cost. Third-party environmental or EMI lab testing is quoted separately, since lab time is billed by the facility.
How long does a ruggedised build take?
A typical prototype takes 8 to 14 weeks from kickoff to a tested unit, and ruggedised builds sit at the longer end or beyond it. Sealed enclosures need machining and seal validation, harsh-environment connectors and mil-spec parts often carry long lead times, and any environmental test campaign is scheduled around lab availability rather than our own.
Can you deliver a MIL-STD-810 certified design?
No, and nobody honestly can, because MIL-STD-810 is a tailored test methodology rather than a certification scheme. What is real is designing to a defined life-cycle environmental profile and testing to selected methods and levels (shock, vibration, temperature, humidity, altitude, sand and dust) at an accredited lab, then reporting the results. We design toward those methods and support the test campaign; the lab issues the report.
How do you handle ITAR, EAR and export-controlled work?
Raonebytes is an India-based engineering firm and does not hold ITAR registration or a facility security clearance. Technical data controlled under ITAR or EAR generally cannot be shared with a foreign engineering team without the correct licence or exemption, and India has its own SCOMET controls on the outbound side. This has to be settled with your export-control or legal function before a technical conversation starts, and in some cases the honest answer is that the work belongs with a cleared domestic supplier.
Can you work on classified programmes?
No. We sign NDAs and handle commercially sensitive information carefully, but classified work requires cleared personnel and accredited facilities that we do not have. Unclassified, non-export-controlled subsystems within a wider programme (a platform, a sensor mount, a comms or power design) are the part of that landscape we can genuinely support.
How do you handle navigation where GPS is unavailable or jammed?
We fuse inertial measurement with wheel, thruster or visual odometry and, where the environment allows, LiDAR SLAM against a map. The realistic constraint is inertial drift: accuracy degrades with time since the last absolute fix, so we specify how long a mission can run within an error budget and design the update strategy (landmarks, docking, acoustic or surface fix) around that rather than claiming indefinite GNSS-denied operation.
Related capabilities
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