Reamda

Reamda is a small engineering company in Tralee, County Kerry, and it is close to the whole of Ireland's indigenous defence robotics industry. Padraig O'Connor founded it in 2001 to do explosive ordnance disposal robotics research and development for military and police customers, and the Irish Defence Forces Ordnance Corps has been the anchor customer from the start. That relationship explains the shape of the company. Ireland runs one of the busiest bomb disposal workloads in western Europe relative to its size, and Reamda has built its products against that operational feedback rather than against a catalogue specification.

The work began with legacy platforms rather than new ones. Between 2006 and 2009 Reamda carried out a complete electronic upgrade of the older HOBO robots, known as the Digital HOBO, and between 2009 and 2011 it added accessories around them, including truck-based control stations, deployable surveillance systems and a remote disruptor platform. That is an unglamorous but revealing body of work, because keeping an ageing fleet current is where the practical knowledge of what an operator actually needs tends to accumulate.

The first clean sheet design was the Reacher, developed from 2012 for the Ordnance Corps Robot Replacement Programme. It was built around confined space work, with a low profile manipulator arm for searching inside vehicles and other tight spaces, and a sliding turret that gives the arm extra reach without lengthening the vehicle. Reamda says it was the first remotely operated vehicle to combine skid steering with Ackermann steering on a rear axle, which gives it both tight turning and controlled movement at speed. A typical task is taking a swab sample from a suspect item and bringing it back to the technician.

Riddler is the security and EOD platform. It weighs 80 kilograms, stows to 730 by 444 by 440 millimetres, and its arm lifts 13 kilograms fully extended, 19 kilograms half extended and 50 kilograms retracted. Control runs over a MIMO mesh radio link out to a kilometre non line of sight and beyond that with line of sight. A high definition version has been supplied to the Irish Defence Forces Engineer Corps. R-Evolve is the larger EOD and CBRN platform, with a six degree of freedom manipulator using variable speed electronic actuators, a lift capacity of 75 kilograms retracted and 30 kilograms fully extended, and the same kilometre class control range.

Beyond robots the company works in embedded control systems, simulation, wireless telephony and video communication. Named strands include remote sensor data acquisition for radiological and x-ray equipment, robotic and weaponry simulation, naval weapon tracking system simulation, and mobile robotic platforms carrying live weapons. Exports started in 2006 and have gone to the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States. Reamda remains independently owned and privately held, and it does not publish headcount or financial figures. The public footprint is thin by design rather than by neglect.