In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo gets hands-on with Overland AI’s Ultra platform at African Lion 2026 in Tantan, Morocco, walking through the autonomous ground vehicle that soldiers in the field have nicknamed “Mufasa” and “Simba.” Built on a commercial Polaris Razor chassis and outfitted with LiDAR, cameras, GNSS receivers, and onboard compute, the vehicle maps its own environment and calculates thousands of potential routes per second, all without needing a constant communications link back to base.
The conversation goes deep on the engineer variant demonstrated at the event: a terrain-shaping configuration that can deploy up to four XM204 top-attack mines and launch APOBS dismounted breaching charges, removing soldiers from what is normally one of the most dangerous jobs on the battlefield. Overland AI’s team also details the platform’s modularity, swappable payloads ranging from counter-UAS systems and remote weapon stations to ISR camera packages, plus its growing footprint with the Army, Marine Corps, and SOCOM as the company transitions from R&D into procurement.
Overland AI’s approach is a case study in keeping the “human in the loop, but out of the danger zone,” using commercial off-the-shelf hardware and a flexible autonomy stack to get capability into soldiers’ hands faster than traditional defense acquisition typically allows.