Fleetonomy a winner of the MOD Last Mile Challenge

The British Ministry of Defence (MOD) 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.

Fleetonomy proposed to develop an Uber-style drone delivery service enabling supply operators to command and control a fleet of unmanned air vehicles, undertaking simultaneous last mile missions. This state-of-the-art project will ultimately reduce the resource burden to dismounted soldiers whilst providing accurate, pace-driven, local context-based and rapid re-supply into congested urban environments.

As announced by Minister for Defence Procurement Harriett Baldwin the MOD Last Mile Challenge sought innovative approaches to support front line troops. The Fleetonomy project will demonstrate how to increase the flexibility, agility and effectiveness of front line troops by leveraging autonomous fleets whilst simultaneously providing fused sensor data to decision-makers.

More than 140 organisations from small and medium-sized enterprises to big defence companies submitted entries for the Last Mile challenge. MOD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) with the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) funded the contracts. 25 projects were chosen from organisations from the UK and worldwide.

Fleetonomy is very proud to be one of the winners of the Challenge as this strengthens our mission to accelerate the adoption of unmanned automated ground and aerial vehicles in urban environments. Fleetonomy is pleased to be supported by I-BDM and Bays Consulting in this project. 

Dan Davies of i-BDM says “i-BDM is excited to be working on this project and brings forward commercial experience and strategic business development to ensure the Phase 1 development has every chance of exploitation within both defence and commercial sectors”

Sophie Carr of Bays Consulting says “”Bays Consulting is providing analytical and decision-making expertise to ensure the Phase 1 development draws upon best practice from the defence, academia and commerce to develop a holistic understanding of how Project Workhorse could be used and exploited across industry sectors.”

To find out more details about this exciting Last Mile Challenge Project, please see the Dstl Press release: 

www.gov.uk/government/news/autonomy-on-the-frontline-last-mile-challenge-winners-announced