Jane Edwards
General Electric’s technology development arm will use 5G-enabled technologies to develop “smart warehouses” at two military installations that support the deployment of supplies and other resources for critical missions worldwide.
The two projects worth $36 million combined are part of the Department of Defense’s $600 million 5G experimentation initiative announced in October and will take place at the Naval Base in San Diego and Marine Corps Logistics Base in Albany, Georgia, GE Research said Wednesday.
“Through our projects with the DOD, we will be demonstrating the ability to track and manage thousands of assets in real-time that support critical military missions on land and at sea. Operations that previously took several days or weeks could accurately and reliably be prepared and deployed in less than 24 hours,” said SM Hasan, 5G mission leader at GE Research and principal investigator on the two projects.
GE Research will use autonomous robots, digital twin technology, real-time asset tracking systems and 5G network testbeds that Verizon installed at its Niskayuna facility in New York to support the research projects.
Hasan said the technologies will help enable the military bases to get a snapshot of the warehouse inventory every 15 minutes, providing them increased visibility for faster decision-making.
Michael Dell'Anno, a principal engineer at GE Research, will join Hasan on the DOD projects as a co-principal investigator.
