Which AgileX Mobile Robot Should Your Lab Buy? Scout, Ranger, Hunter, Bunker and UMR Compared

AgileX platforms are the most-ordered mobile robots at MG Super Labs, and the question we get most often is not "what does it cost?" but "which one is right for us?" The answer depends on three things: the terrain you need to cover, the payload you need to carry, and whether you want a bare chassis or a navigation-ready system. This guide walks through each family so you can shortlist with confidence before you request a quote.

Start with the environment, not the robot

Almost every mis-purchase we have seen comes from buying for the demo video rather than the floor the robot will actually run on. Ask yourself:

• Indoor, flat floors (labs, corridors, warehouses): you want manoeuvrability and precision, not suspension travel.
• Outdoor campus roads and lawns: you need ground clearance, weather tolerance and a drivetrain that will not stall on kerbs.
• Rough or unstructured terrain (fields, construction, disaster-response research): tracks or high-torque four-wheel drive, and a chassis you can hose down.
• Road-like driving research (lane keeping, Ackermann control, autonomous-vehicle coursework): car-like steering matters more than raw torque.

The AgileX families at a glance

Scout — the general-purpose outdoor workhorse

Scout is the platform most Indian universities start with. Four-wheel differential drive, independent suspension, and a payload comfortable enough for a lidar, a camera rig, a compute box and a small manipulator. It is the safest choice when the research direction is not yet fixed, because it does acceptable work indoors and outdoors. Scout Mini is the compact version for tighter budgets and smaller spaces; it keeps the same control stack, so code written for one moves to the other.

Ranger — when you need to move sideways

Ranger uses four independent steer-drive modules, which gives it omnidirectional motion: it can crab sideways, spin in place or drive like a car, all on the same chassis. That makes it the right pick for logistics research, docking and tight indoor manoeuvres where a differential-drive robot would need a three-point turn. Ranger Mini brings the same steering modes to a desk-sized footprint. We stock the current Ranger Mini 3.0 generation; the earlier Mini versions are no longer supplied.

Hunter — car-like steering for autonomous-driving work

Hunter is an Ackermann-steered platform: a front axle that turns, like a car. If your group teaches or researches autonomous driving, path planning for non-holonomic vehicles, or outdoor delivery, Hunter behaves the way your models expect a vehicle to behave. Hunter SE is the lighter, lower-cost variant that still runs the same control interface.

Bunker — tracks for terrain that defeats wheels

Bunker swaps wheels for tracks, which gives it the best traction and stair-climbing ability in the range, at the cost of some speed and energy efficiency. Choose it for agriculture, inspection, mining, defence-adjacent research or anywhere the ground is loose, wet or stepped. We supply Bunker Mini for compact deployments and the current Bunker Pro 2 for heavy payloads; older Bunker Pro versions are not stocked.

UMR — a modular chassis for building your own

UMR (Universal Mobile Robot) is for teams who want to design the vehicle rather than buy a finished one: a configurable drive module platform you can extend with your own frame, sensors and payload. It suits mechanical-engineering programmes and product teams prototyping a custom mobile base.

Bare chassis or navigation kit?

Every platform above is available as a standard chassis or as a Nav configuration. The chassis gives you CAN control, battery, motors and a ROS driver — you supply the compute, lidar and software. The Nav versions add a lidar, an onboard computer and a working SLAM and navigation stack, so the robot drives itself out of the box.

Our honest recommendation: if your lab has a strong ROS team and already owns sensors, buy the chassis and build. If the robot is meant to be a teaching platform, a demo vehicle for a sponsor, or the base for application work (not navigation research itself), buy the Nav version. The time saved integrating a lidar and tuning a nav stack is usually worth more than the price difference.

ROS and software

All AgileX platforms ship with an open ROS driver (ROS 1 and ROS 2), a CAN interface and a Python SDK. The topics and message types are consistent across the range, which is why so many groups standardise on AgileX for a fleet: a student who learned on a Scout Mini can move to a Hunter without relearning the stack. We maintain MG Automation Technologies user guides for each platform we sell, covering unboxing, charging, first drive and ROS bring-up.

Procurement for Indian institutions

AgileX platforms are typically bought on purchase order rather than card. We supply GST invoices, support GeM procurement where applicable, and offer academic and volume pricing through our B2B programme. If you need a formal quotation for an institutional purchase, use the Request for Quote page and tell us the platform, the configuration (chassis or Nav), and any payload you plan to mount — we will advise on compatible lidars, cameras and compute at the same time.

Quick decision table

• General research, mixed indoor/outdoor: Scout or Scout Mini
• Omnidirectional, docking, indoor logistics: Ranger or Ranger Mini 3.0
• Autonomous driving, Ackermann control: Hunter or Hunter SE
• Rough terrain, stairs, agriculture: Bunker Mini or Bunker Pro 2
• Design your own vehicle: UMR

Browse the full range in our AgileX Robotics collection, or see every ROS-ready platform we stock under ROS Robots. Still unsure? The Find Your Robot page asks four questions and points you to a shortlist.