Tiny AZAK robotic hauled a navy truck 100 occasions its personal weight

Image a robotic you possibly can carry up a flight of stairs, remotely towing a navy truck that outweighs a completely loaded college bus, and doing it with out breaking a wheel. That’s the scene an American robotics firm says it captured on video from a current U.S. Military demonstration, and if the footage holds up, it says one thing placing about the place battlefield logistics are headed.

The corporate behind the video is AZAK, a Denver-based protection know-how agency that posted the clip, describing a 500-pound unmanned floor automobile towing a Palletized Load System truck, the U.S. Military’s major heavy hauler for ammunition and provides, which the corporate says weighs 53,000 kilos (24,040 kg) empty. That determine strains up intently with printed specs for the Military’s PLS A1 mannequin, listed by its producer, Oshkosh Protection, at a curb weight of 53,000 kilos earlier than any cargo goes on board. Within the video, the small robotic can also be hauling an additional 1,000 kilos (454 kg) of ammunition on the identical time, which means the tiny machine is shifting greater than 100 occasions its personal weight in uncooked towing capability, in accordance with AZAK’s personal numbers.

“The mathematics appears not possible,” AZAK wrote within the publish. “The footage from a current Military demonstration occasion says in any other case.”

Understanding why this issues begins with what a Palletized Load System truck truly is. Constructed by Oshkosh Protection, the PLS is the spine of how the Military strikes ammunition and provides to the entrance, a five-axle truck that may load and unload standardized cargo pallets by itself utilizing a hydraulic arm, with no need a forklift or a crew of troopers standing round. It has been in service since 1993 and has hauled provides via Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Getting a machine that measurement to maneuver in any respect, not to mention getting it towed by one thing a soldier may choose up with each palms, is just not one thing that occurs by chance.

That’s the place AZAK’s design philosophy is available in, and it seems nothing like a typical navy robotic. As an alternative of constructing a automobile with a chassis, axles, and a central engine, AZAK places the complete propulsion system, motor, battery, gearbox, and management electronics, inside every particular person wheel. The corporate calls its wheel module the S26, roughly 26 inches (66 cm) in diameter and weighing about 86 kilos (39 kg) by itself, able to producing round 147 pound-feet of torque per wheel. As a result of every wheel is a self-contained energy unit, AZAK can bolt 4, six, or extra of them onto virtually any body, even a wood log in previous firm demonstrations, and the torque scales up with each wheel added. A four-wheel configuration is rated to haul as much as 1,500 kilos (680 kg) of payload, which begins to clarify how a robotic in that weight class may get actual traction in opposition to a stalled, multi-ton truck.

AZAK frames the video as proof that the machine performs exterior a sanitized lab setting, not inside one. “Discover the massive bump within the video?” the corporate wrote. “This isn’t a managed lab check on a flat flooring. This can be a 53,000 lb deadweight hitting real-world resistance, and the AZAK didn’t flinch.”

What’s independently verifiable is that AZAK has been steadily working its approach into the Military’s unmanned floor automobile pipeline over the previous yr. The corporate took half in a full coaching rotation on the Nationwide Coaching Heart with the Military’s 1st Cavalry Division in 2025, testing its platform on terrain the place typical automobiles struggled or couldn’t go in any respect. It gained the Military’s xTech Edge Strike Floor competitors, a program constructed to search out promising new tactical applied sciences, and it joined G-TEAD, a market designed to attach navy patrons with rising tech suppliers.

In March 2026, AZAK introduced a second-generation model of its platform to the AUSA World Pressure Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, one of many Military’s largest annual showcases for floor automobile innovation. None of that ensures the towing video reveals precisely what AZAK claims, however it does present an organization that has spent actual time in entrance of Military evaluators quite than solely posting demo footage on-line.

The larger image right here is the issue the Military is definitely making an attempt to unravel, one thing the service has began calling the “final tactical mile,” the ultimate, most harmful stretch of floor between a provide level and frontline troops, the place enemy drones and artillery make each truck run of venture. The Military has already examined different autonomous haulers for this job, together with a six-wheeled robotic known as Hunter Wolf utilized by the one hundred and first Airborne Division to maneuver cargo throughout a coaching train earlier this yr, and it has an open request out to trade for floor robots that may each carry cargo and evacuate wounded troopers with out worsening their accidents. A robotic that’s sufficiently small to cover, mild sufficient to hold, and powerful sufficient to maneuver a caught multi-ton truck would examine lots of packing containers for commanders making an attempt to maintain troopers away from that stretch of street within the first place.