The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) is launching a new competition for suppliers developing computer vision (CV) capabilities for land-based autonomous drones.
The competition is sponsored by MOD’s Rapid AI Delivery Taskforce (Taskforce RAID). MOD is running a supplier drop-in session on Wednesday Sep 9, at 13:00.
Up to £3m is available for winning suppliers.
“We are looking for suppliers who can demonstrate strong model performance against a military object detection use case and who are interested in working collaboratively with Defence to improve that capability using representative data and feedback from live exercise activity,” it said in a market notice on September 3.
“Suppliers will be assessed on how their models actually perform against the use case, rather than on written proposals alone” – MOD.
It is testing CV system with the aim of creating “an AI enabled drone swarming system” with the aim to “evolve this capability and implement other sensing-specific AI domains and multiple layers of decision-making behaviour” – suppliers may form part of a “core component of an industry co-creation ecosystem,” MOD added.
Why take part?
"For suppliers progressing to Stage 2, it also provides an opportunity to work much more closely with the Defence user community, understand the operational problem in greater depth and develop capability using increasingly representative data.
"For successful suppliers selected for Stage 3, it provides the ability to rapidly develop models and demonstrate suitability for continued co-creation,” MOD added.
Suppliers will need to be registered on both the Model Arena and Commercial X dynamic market, MOD added. They should also initially register their interest via modelarena at advai dot com, quoting "Model Arena - AI enabled Swarming."
MOD has further details in the market notice.
MOD’s efforts to modernise capabilities continue at pace, if in an arguably piecemeal manner. Among other new competitions this week is the UK Defence Innovation (UKDI)’s Project PANOPTES – which is aimed at advancing integrated counter-uncrewed aerial system (C-UAS) capabilities for force protection.
MOD wants to see systems that can “detect, track, identify, decide and defeat mass and low-cost threats in a cost-effective manner and without being overwhelmed or exhausting stockpiles” and overwhelming defensive infrastructure.
In a September 2 release, MOD said PANOPTES was the “first phase of a planned multi-phase capability development and acquisition pathway leading to a future Programme of Record, subject to future approvals and contractual arrangements.”
The competitions, worth a combined initial £8 million, come after the the Army was reportedly told by the government to stop "non-essential" training exercises to save money. A defence source told the BBC that plans mean not doing "’nice to have training’ - like large live fire exercises and rehearsing platoon attacks in UK training areas like Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire and Sennybridge in Wales,” as the BBC put it.
Other specific training aimed at modernising the Army – such as practising drone and counter-drone warfare is expected to continue, it added.
Is MOD organising enough C-UAS training?
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