Leading systems and engineering technology consultancy,
Frazer-Nash, has been selected as one of the winners of the Defence
and Security Accelerator's 'Autonomous Last Mile' resupply
competition.
The company has been awarded funding to develop a battlefield
management program - 'Route, Environment, and Asset Resupply
Manager' or 'REARM' - which will help the Army use autonomous
assets to deliver supplies to front line missions.
Project Manager, Thom Kirwan-Evans, describes how the program
will help optimise the automation of resupply systems:
"REARM is a state-of-the-art program that is capable of
receiving - and learning from - real-time updates from the
battlefield. It will be able to issue orders to a fleet of
autonomous land, air and sea assets to undertake resupply
operations, identifying the optimal plan, route and vehicle for the
dispatch of supplies.
"Through machine learning, REARM will be able to develop an
understanding of the battlefield environment, forces' needs and
autonomous platforms' delivery capabilities, using this to predict
demand and plan operational delivery to the front line."
In its initial Phase 1 development, REARM will be demonstrated
in a simulated environment, being integrated with real-life systems
in Phase 2.
Pete Stockel, Dstl's competition lead said:
"The number and quality of the entries for this competition was
outstanding and the competition was fierce. We chose the best from
across the proposals to enable the system solutions we want for
prototype demonstration and evaluation. This was a fully open
competition, with many of those down-selected happening to come
from the UK. This illustrates the strength of our national
capability and the benefit of recent investments in this important,
and rapidly developing, technology sector."
A copy of DASA's news release can be found
here.