Neya Systems Wins $3.3M Navy Contract

Neya Systems, the leading provider of off-road autonomy and mission orchestration software, has been awarded a $3.3 million contract to deliver an Autonomous Construction Equipment (ACE) Kit to the U.S. Naval Construction Force (NCF). The ACE solution will enable the autonomous repair of airfields and ports, as well as naval base construction, in high-risk environments where personnel are often exposed to significant hazards.

The ACE system is platform-agnostic and will be deployed on the NCF’s existing fleets of vehicles with scalability to additional vehicles, including skid steer loaders, forklifts, bulldozers, and front-end loaders.  Neya’s autonomy stack, N-Drive™, will deliver a variety of advanced autonomous construction behaviors to the ACE Kit.

In addition to N-Drive, ACE combines FOCUS ATAK, its command-and-control solution, with the Mission Planning and Management System (MPMS), its one-to-many fleet management system, to provide operators with a unified way to manage multi-vehicle autonomous construction and repair operations. FOCUS ATAK provides situational awareness and operator control, while MPMS enables teams to coordinate and manage multiple vehicles working together across a mission. Together, the system serves as a force multiplier, giving operators the flexibility to manage complex construction tasks while reducing cognitive workload and keeping personnel out of harm’s way.

“Autonomous construction provides the Naval Construction Force with an innovative way to approach the repair and construction of the U.S. Navy’s critical infrastructure in dangerous environments,” said Kurt Bruck, vice president, Neya Systems. “By automating repetitive and hazardous construction tasks, our technology can help to reduce the exposure of personnel to dangerous work, while enabling infrastructure to be repaired, restored, or built more efficiently in areas with limited or nonexistent infrastructure.”

Backed by more than a decade of development in autonomous construction for the U.S. military and commercial construction Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), ACE will provide the NCF with a full spectrum of construction autonomy behaviors from teleoperation through semi-autonomous and fully autonomous behaviors. The system is designed to remain operational in demanding GPS-denied, degraded, intermittent, and limited (DDIL) environments.

The award is being administered for the U.S. Army Contracting Command and Detroit Arsenal through the National Advanced Mobility Consortium (NAMC), a non-profit alliance to advance ground and robotics technologies for the U.S. military.