Army Warfighting Experiment – Testing & Driving Innovation

At the end of last year, we attended the Army Warfighting Experiment (AWE). This British Army programme gathers military, industrial and academic allies and partners to explore how new technologies can modernise and optimise the Army.

This diverse group encourages innovation and constant improvement to software and hardware to keep our Armed Forces at the cutting the edge of warfare while improving safety for our troops.

The most recent experiment, ‘AWE Blunt & Dislocate’, was part of ‘The Urban Series,’ focusing on urban warfare. The four-week event was supported by troops from 2 YORKS and took place at the MoD Copehill Down training facility on Salisbury Plain.

Competition was stiff but Synoptix was selected to showcase our Optimus 360 system, which is a distributed unattended camera system designed to provide a rapidly deployable ‘digital sentry’ to deployed operations.

Employing advanced AI, the system automatically detects, identifies and tracks objects, alerting users to the presence of potential threats. By combining this technology with edge computing, Optimus 360 removes the dependency on high bandwidth communications bearers to distribute video around the battlefield making it more reliable and effective.

Our Participation in AWE Blunt & Dislocate provided invaluable insights into how the Optimus 360 system could be employed and add value to the British Army. These insights are being used to drive the ongoing development of the system, are spawning the integration of new capabilities and are generating early ideas for similar products.

We were pleased that our attendance also meant we could network with other innovative UK suppliers such as Overview and Living Optics.