AT&T and the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) penned a three-year agreement to explore and develop 5G and edge computing maritime solutions to benefit national defense, homeland security, and such applications as shipping, oil and gas and recreational boating. A main goal is to create advanced solutions including a connected system of unmanned and autonomous vehicles for national defense, multi-domain situational awareness, command and control, training, logistics, and predictive maintenance and data analytics.
Under the agreement, super-fast, low latency AT&T 5G networking and edge computing will support 5G-focused experiments on NPS facilities incorporating AI and ML, robotics, IoT, data analytics and smart base solutions.
The collaboration will include such locations as the Naval Postgraduate School’s Sea Land Air Military Research (“SLAMR”) program. SLAMR conducts activity at Camp Roberts in South Monterey County and on the NPS main campus and at SLAMR’s beach lab north of the main campus in Monterey, California. The NPS SLAMR program will explore the development of 5G and edge computing-powered sea applications that connect crewed and non-crewed vessels and sensors
Testing will include vision guiding the SLAMR program is to eventually have a command and aquatics operations facility with which to perform localized, unmanned aerial, surface, and underwater robotic vehicle activity. It is expected the facility and some of the experimental vehicles will be connected and powered by AT&T networking capabilities, including 5G and edge computing services.
The first 5G and MEC nodes to be installed at the SLAMR site are expected to be available for use during the first quarter of 2022.
Original Release: PR Newswire
