Defence and Security

What is Re-Vector?

Re-Vector was originally developed for nuclear decommissioning, where robotic systems are routinely required to access confined spaces, navigate around obstacles and perform robust manipulation tasks in hazardous environments. The same capabilities are now finding application in adjacent sectors including aerospace manufacturing, maritime operations and other advanced industrial settings.

Re-Vector is a novel robotic manipulation platform designed to deploy tools and sensors deep within cluttered and difficult-to-access environments while retaining freedom of movement, positioning accuracy and force application capability.

Unlike conventional robot arms, which can encounter regions of restricted dexterity within their workspace, Re-Vector is based upon a distributed-steering architecture that allows the robot to continuously reorganise itself as it moves. The workspace remains highly connected and usefully exploitable. The arm can reach around multiple obstacles and operate effectively in cluttered environments. Rather than converging on a small number of kinematic solutions, the robot can explore extensive regions of configuration space while maintaining the same task objective. The result is a highly connected workspace in which path planning becomes a process of discovering favourable routes through the environment rather than avoiding problematic regions of robot motion.

Potential Defence and Security applications

Re-Vector is intended for organisations that require deployment of sensors, tools and robotic effectors into confined, cluttered or hazardous environments where conventional robotic systems have limited access or restricted freedom of movement.

• Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) and Counter-IED operations
• Vehicle search, inspection and exploitation
• CBRN inspection, sampling and intervention
• Infrastructure inspection and security operations
• Remote handling of hazardous materials
• Deployment of specialist sensors and effectors into difficult-to-access locations
• Inspection, maintenance and repair tasks within military platforms and support infrastructure

More broadly, the technology is applicable wherever operators must perform precise technical tasks within environments that are difficult, hazardous or impractical for direct human access.

What problem does it solve?

Many Defence and Security tasks require sensors, tools and effectors to be deployed into environments that are constrained, cluttered or hazardous. While robotic systems can often approach these environments, maintaining dexterity, positioning accuracy and force application capability once deep within them remains challenging. Examples include:

• Accessing confined spaces within vehicles, vessels and infrastructure
• Inspecting or interacting with suspicious packages and concealed devices
• Deploying sensors into hazardous or inaccessible locations
• Performing remote cutting, probing, sampling or manipulation tasks
• Operating around pipework, cabling, structural members and other obstacles
• Conducting technical interventions whilst maintaining safe stand-off distances for personnel

From the operator's perspective, Re-Vector behaves differently from a conventional robot arm. Rather than reaching a point and progressively running out of options for further movement, the arm can continue to bend, twist and reorganise itself as it advances through an environment. This capability enables the toolhead to remain manoeuvrable even after passing through confined access points and around multiple obstacles.

The effect is somewhat analogous to a biological limb reaching into a confined space. However, Re-Vector extends this principle considerably further. Steering capability is distributed throughout the length of the arm rather than being concentrated at a small number of major joints. The joints pass through a greater degree of rotation than would be possible in a natural system, enabling the robot to adopt postures and manoeuvres that have no biological equivalent.

The result is a robotic system capable of carrying sensors, tools and effectors deep into cluttered environments whilst retaining the freedom of movement required to perform useful work once there.

What is novel / innovative about it?

Rethinking Robotic Kinematics

Most industrial robots developed over the past seventy years have been founded upon serial kinematic architectures described using Denavit-Hartenberg conventions. While enormously successful, especially in repetitive industrial applications, these architectures exhibit a number of well-known characteristics including singularities, restricted dexterity in parts of the workspace and sensitivity to robot placement.

The Re-Vector programme began with a simple question: does robotic kinematic space need to be organised in this way?

Rather than treating rotational axes as independent orthogonal entities connected in series, the programme explored the consequences of linking pairs of flanking axial joints through an intermediate transversal joint derived from zonohedral geometry. This led to the development of the Axial-Transversal-Axial (ATA) triad, a kinematic structure in which steering capability is distributed and the constituent axes become interdependent.

The resulting architecture exhibits characteristics that differ markedly from conventional serial manipulators, including highly connected configuration spaces, sustained manipulability and the practical elimination of kinematic singularities. Ongoing work using Lie algebra-based analysis suggests that these behaviours arise naturally from the underlying geometry rather than from software compensation or control-layer workarounds.

ATA Triads and Zonohedral Geometry

The architecture is based upon a sequence of Axial-Transversal-Axial joints, or ATA Triads, derived from zonohedral geometries. The transversal angle is derived from the body diagonal of the cube, the first zonohedron, 35.26°. Critically, no axis is privileged over another; the X, Y and Z axes are inherently coupled and interdependent. Each ATA Triad produces a frusto-spherical distributed joint. A sequence of these joints in the kinematic chain produces partially decoupled, frusto-spherical steering.

Large angular deflections from 0° to 109.47° are achieved at frequent intervals along the chain, enabling freedom to operate in confined spaces and to enable the toolhead to follow complex geometries. The un-elbowed format of the robot suits it for operation in confined spaces. The robot kinematics are near isotropic making the robot capable of applying force almost equally in all directions or vectors.

Sustained Manipulability

The highly connected configuration space of Re-Vector translates directly into operational capability. Re-Vector retains high levels of manoeuvrability and force application capability across a substantial proportion of its operational envelope, reducing sensitivity to robot placement and supporting operation in cluttered environments.

Manipulability-Aware Path Planning

The Re-Vector programme has led to the development of planning approaches that exploit the robot's highly connected configuration space and sustained manipulability. Rather than simply identifying collision-free trajectories, planning algorithms can actively seek regions of favourable kinematic performance and identify continuous corridors of motion through complex environments.

This creates opportunities for more robust obstacle avoidance, shared autonomy, Digital Twin operation and human-supervised task execution in environments where conventional planning approaches may struggle.

Current Status

• Re-Vector ZH® platform currently at TRL 7.
• Physical robotic systems built and demonstrated.
• ROS2 / MoveIt integration.
• Digital Twin operation.
• Collision-aware planning.
• Multiple robot formats: ZH1700, ZH1300, ZH800.
• CE/UKCA commercialisation pathway underway.
• Demonstrated in nuclear decommissioning, aerospace manufacturing, on full-scale robotic systems up to approximately 2m reach.

Future Capability Development

• Haptic teleoperation
• Force reflection
• Tool-mounted F/T sensing
• Shared autonomy
• Manipulability-aware planning
• AI-assisted task execution
• Cobot operation