Quantico hosts ‘Hive’ demonstration which makes resupply to war fighters easier

Photo By Frances Seybold | U.S. Marines and contractors fly drones during the Hive Final Mile on Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia Mar. 15. The drones will provide an autonomous point-to-point distribution system employing a mixed unmanned aerial system fleet managed by a platform agnostic software architecture in order to satisfy unique demand generated on a hand held device by individual war fighters for 24 hours.  

QUANTICO, VA, UNITED STATES

03.23.2018

Story by Frances Seybold 

Marine Corps Base Quantico

The system’s unique platform, agnostic software architecture, simultaneously employs four different UAS variants autonomously to best satisfy demand. The completely autonomous fleet of UAS included rotary and fixed-wing UAS as well as some outfitted with obstacle avoidance capabilities.
The Hive Final Mile (HFM), as the system is called, is a logistics initiative by Marine Corps Installations and Logistics, Logistics Innovation Section (LPV-3), Next Generation Logistics (NexLog) branch and the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s (OSD) Rapid Reaction Technology Office, that employs UAS “Hives” connected to a war fighter’s handheld device. Resupply messages from handheld devices are captured by a cloud-based storage platform in order to provide real time visibility of on hand inventory levels for war fighters and “Hives.” HFM software autonomously queues and dispatches autonomous platforms in order to satisfy the war fighter’s unique demand. The payoff is significant improvement in service to the war fighter and the reduction in the bottlenecks and operational constraints inherent to current logistical and distribution operations.

• Date Taken: 03.23.2018
• Date Posted: 03.23.2018 12:28
• Story ID: 270413
• Location: QUANTICO, VA, US