The United Kingdom’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory has awarded Thales UK a contract to advance digital twin experimentation on land robotics and autonomous systems.
Under the Land Digital Robotics and Autonomous Systems Integration Capability project, Thales UK and Dstl aim to produce a hybrid ecosystem, providing researchers with a common architecture and interface to plan and experiment virtually and physically.
The platform, which will use Thales’ Digital Crew and other artificial intelligence-powered tools, will enable the assessment of RAC’s viability when used in a beyond-visual line-of-sight reconnaissance role.
Stephen McCann, managing director at Thales in the UK, highlighted how the contract comes with the growing use of autonomy and AI.
“[The] important research partnership between Dstl, Thales and multiple SMEs will advance the U.K.’s understanding of digital twins and open architectures and explore how crewed, optionally crewed and uncrewed systems can coexist in complex, multi-domain architectures,” he said.
Dstl Land Autonomy Principal Adviser Guy Powell added that the initiative will help keep pace with the rapid advancement of RAS.