Ubihere and Strategic Technology Consultants (STC) received a $1.6 million award from the Army Applications Lab to demonstrate the ability to automate their inventory management process for field artillery. The Vision Based Inventory Management (VBIM) project is a Direct-to-Phase II SBIR under the Army Futures Command (AFC) SPARTN initiative. The objective of the program is to modernize and automate munition inventory tracking processes. To achieve this objective, the Ubihere team will design and demonstrate a highly capable mobile logistics solution, specifically, by extending the capability of Ubihere’s artificially intelligent computer vision suite of software known as Ubivision. The VBIM solution incorporates cutting-edge AI (developed by Ubihere) to automatically recognize, categorize, and document all known Army field artillery munitions. The ultimate objective of the VBIM project is to increase the speed of field artillery resupply through modernization and automation.
Under the 12-month project, the team will develop a flexible software solution capable of operating effectively on a Samsung S20. The solution will allow for easy transfer and acceptance of the munitions (and ancillary materials) utilizing digital chain of custody and authentication. The Team will demonstrate a hand-held prototype system that identifies and extracts information from artillery munitions – using stenciled identification markings, including the item’s nomenclature, DODIC, and lot number – and then exports these data directly to an inventory management system.
The Team’s goal is to develop a system using visual recognition algorithms to completely automate the battlefield logistics processes for field artillery operations. Michael Karnes, Ubihere’s Senior Software Engineer, elaborates, “Ubivision is being adapted for this project to tackle the most advanced challenges of deploying computer vision on the battlefield. Our flexible and easily trainable solution is being ported to the android operating system to provide a one-of-a-kind capability for the Army.”
Eric Wagner, Executive Vice President of Ubihere, adds, “We are developing the VBIM solution to be highly flexible and easily trainable for other applications across the Department of Defense. From automated logistics to process management, we believe Ubivision will provide our partners with the information they need in a real-time automated manner. We are very excited about the outcome of this project.”