Unmanned ground vehicle
vehicle that operates while in contact with the ground and without an onboard human presence
An unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) also known colloquially as armored robot (ARB) is a vehicle that operates while in contact with the ground without an onboard human presence. UGVs can be used for many applications where it is inconvenient, dangerous, expensive, or impossible to use an onboard human operator. Typically, the vehicle has sensors to observe the environment, and autonomously controls its behavior or uses a remote human operator to control the vehicle via teleoperation.
The UGV is the land-based counterpart to unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned underwater vehicles and unmanned surface vehicles. Unmanned robots are used in war and by civilians.
History
In 1904, Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo was developing a radio-based control system, which he named Telekino. He chose to conduct an initial test in the form of a three-wheeled land vehicle (tricycle), which had an effective range of 20 to 30 meters, the first known example of an unmanned ground vehicle.
The first prototypes of explosive robotic drones were Aubriot-Gabet 'land torpedoes' invented in France in 1915 and the Crocodile Schneider-Creusot. Twenty examples were put into service with the 2nd French Army in July 1915.
A working remote-controlled car was reported in the October 1921 issue of RCA's World Wide Wireless magazine.
The public source identifies “Unmanned ground vehicle” as vehicle that operates while in contact with the ground and without an onboard human presence. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Unmanned, ground and vehicle.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2031473. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1904, 1915 and 1921.
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This entry incorporates text from “Unmanned ground vehicle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.