UK’s latest defence robotics and autonomy competition looks to break new ground
The Royal Navy’s SWEEP system uses an uncrewed surface vessel and autonomous payloads to conduct mine countermeasure operations. (Photo: Royal Navy/Crown Copyright)
The UK Ministry of Defence continues to accelerate investment in robotics and autonomy as it adapts to a rapidly evolving battlefield.
While uncrewed capabilities across the air, land and maritime domains have become a major focus of military investment, attention is increasingly shifting towards the underlying technologies that enable autonomy and will shape the next phase of the competition.
This can be seen in the latest competition launched by UK Defence Innovation (UKDI) on behalf of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) as part of its Autonomy Programme Incubator project. Titled Novel autonomy and robotics, the premise is specific in its goal to identify disruptive, low technology readiness-level (TRL) autonomy concepts that the department can accelerate.
According to the
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