Esri’s ArcGIS Online to provide info platform for Autonomous Warrior 2018

Posted on 21 June, 2018 by Advance 

Esri UK’s cloud-based mapping and analytics platform, ArcGIS Online, will provide the vital information integration and collaboration platform for Autonomous Warrior, part of the 2018 Army Warfighting Experiment (AWE) series.

Autonomous Warrior will test how Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) can be exploited in the Land Environment. The exercise will take place in late Autumn 2018.

Esri’s ArcGIS Online will provide Autonomous Warrior with a means to exploit, integrate and visualise data from a wide variety of disparate ground and airborne RAS devices and sensors, using location and time as the common framework. This will support, through the re-use and fusion of multiple information layers, collaborative planning, shared situational awareness and dynamic decision making, enabling RAS to demonstrate its effectiveness in speeding up the military OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) loop. Previously, this data would have been held in standalone and static spreadsheets, slides and paper maps.

Esri UK is the leading provider of geographic information systems (GIS) to UK MoD and NATO Armed Forces and is among some 50 industry participants collaborating with the British Army, Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, US Army, UK MoD and Dstl on Autonomous Warrior. ArcGIS Online will enable the participants to view, share and contribute to the plan collaboratively from their own locations and ensures that everyone is working on a common and up-to-date set of plans. 

“ArcGIS Online has proved itself as a game-changer in planning for tactical exercises and for deployed operations. For Autonomous Warrior, GIS addresses the key challenge of information integration. It does this by underpinning the operation of unmanned platforms and sensors and the exploitation of their data, to deliver critical situational awareness and decision support,” said Adrian Friend, Head of Defence National Security and Public Safety at Esri UK.

Lieutenant Colonel Nick Serle, of the Infantry Trials and Development Unit, commented: “ArcGIS Online should provide us with a platform for integrating information to deliver a fused common operating picture. It should enable a new way of planning and we look forward to exploring its full potential in Autonomous Warrior to inform future RAS operations.”