{"id":84378,"date":"2017-09-14T10:33:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T10:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=66f8f520171dcc24d0eccd94a06ac34f"},"modified":"2017-09-14T13:29:45","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T13:29:45","slug":"press-release-autonomy-on-the-frontline-last-mile-challenge-winners-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=84378","title":{"rendered":"Press release: Autonomy on the frontline: Last Mile challenge winners announced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated:<\/em> Video added<\/p>\n

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The Ministry of Defence (MOD<\/abbr>) set industry and academia a challenge to design pioneering technology to get vital supplies to soldiers on the front line and the winners have now been chosen.<\/p>\n

Part of MOD<\/abbr>\u2019s Innovation Initiative, and led by MOD<\/abbr>\u2019s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl<\/abbr>) with the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA<\/abbr>), the contracts are worth around \u00a33.5 million over 3 years.<\/p>\n

Dstl<\/abbr>, in partnership with industry and academia, delivers defence and security science and technology (S&T<\/abbr>) research for MOD<\/abbr> and other government departments and allied organisations, looking to find the best solutions to UK defence and security challenges of today and the future.<\/p>\n

Supplying troops in challenging environments \u2013 often dubbed \u2018the last mile\u2019 \u2013 using unmanned technology may reduce risk and cost. As announced at last year\u2019s Farnborough Airshow, Dstl<\/abbr> is working with the US Department of Defense to accelerate and demonstrate the effective use of these new robotic and autonomous systems technologies, with UK troops testing prototypes by 2019.<\/p>\n

Drawing on commercial technology and conceptual ideas, from online delivery systems to futuristic unmanned vehicles, more than 140 organisations from small and medium-sized enterprises to big defence companies submitted entries for the Last Mile challenge.<\/p>\n

Example of how technology developed under the Last Mile challenge might work and support troops on the frontline.<\/a><\/p>\n

Winning ideas include autonomous hover-bikes, unmanned air and ground vehicles, novel means of autonomously loading and unloading, navigating and delivery ordering, management and control using \u2018uber-like\u2019 and other app-based technologies.<\/p>\n

Twenty-five projects were chosen from organisations from the UK and worldwide with a total contract value for the 6-month first phase of almost \u00a32 million to advance the technology towards a system solution for \u2018tactical resupply in a box\u2019. The subsequent year-long phase will then go on to produce demonstrator system prototypes of the concepts, including evaluation with the British Army in October 2018 as part of the Army\u2019s Warfighter Experiment \u2018Autonomous Warrior (Land)\u2019 (AWE18), in addition to a potential demonstration in the US.<\/p>\n

UK jobs will be created or secured from the project, with the majority of companies chosen being from Britain.
\nThe Innovation Initiative and \u00a3800 million Defence Innovation Fund aims to encourage imagination, ingenuity and entrepreneurship, to find twenty-first century solutions to rapidly emerging threats.<\/p>\n

Dstl<\/abbr>\u2019s lead for the challenge, Peter Stockel, said:<\/p>\n

\n

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. However, it was great to also be able to pick some great propositions from around the world. The brief is to rapidly demonstrate system solutions which aim to reduce the logistic burden on our Armed Forces, provide new operational capability and reduce casualties; so we\u2019re pleased with the response and keen to see the potential capability benefits being assessed by our military during AWE18.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The full list of Last Mile challenge winners is published by the Defence and Security Accelerator<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

\nDstl<\/abbr> Media Enquiries<\/h3>\n
\n
\n

\n Email<\/span>
\n press@dstl.gov.uk<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n Media enquiries<\/span>
\n 01980 956845\n <\/p>\n

\n Out of hours<\/span>
\n 07384 210107\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Delivery drones and resupply robots are set to bring vital reinforcements to frontline troops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84413,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84378\/revisions\/84413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}