Navy seeks innovative ideas to drive world leading autonomy capability

To enable continued UK success in future maritime operations, it is vital that the Royal Navy continues to be equipped with the latest cutting-edge capabilities. In a new competition, the Royal Navy will be reaching out to innovators to propose mature autonomy ideas that will increase the efficiency of maritime operations, or otherwise provide improved operational capability and help them delivery military output on operations.

The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) in partnership with NavyX, the Royal Navy’s new Autonomy Innovation Accelerator, will soon be launching the NavyX Maritime Autonomous Systems (MAS) competition, seeking proposals for rapid impact and novel MAS capability innovations to drive the transformational change in the Royal Navy.

We will be looking, for example, for solutions that demonstrate the capability to autonomously move valuable loads, from ship to ship, ship to shore and shore to ship, with minimal operator input. And, we will be specifically looking for mature technologies that the Royal Navy can rapidly develop and prove in an operational environment, putting the solutions into the hands of sailors more quickly.

NavyX is tasked to drive rapid, continual transformational change in autonomy across all Maritime Environments. They will be working in close partnership with DASA to make use of DASA’s existing outreach team and effective and swift competition mechanisms. NavyX will provide the end user testing and trialling facilities to ensure maximum impact from solutions proposed through the competition. Collaboration across the Defence Innovation team ensures that our Armed Forces are incorporating the latest thinking and technology advances onto their platforms.

The total funding will be announced when the competition is launched.

Queries should be sent to accelerator@dstl.gov.uk.