Ministry of Defence to deploy chatbots for soldiers

16th September 2019

Envitia

Lanna Deamer

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The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) is exploring the use of Chatbot digital assistants, utilising artificial intelligence to help tactical military users to rapidly access information in the field. This technology will enable soldiers to have conversations with a text chat interface system to find and discover the data they need to perform their mission.

British geospatial and data company, Envitia was awarded the task of building the high level Chatbot solution, using AI to answer questions and provide relevant information to the user, both online and offline.

Earlier this year, Dstl ran a competition calling for innovative companies to build a Chatbot demonstrator and evaluate its performance and military utility. The vast experience of Envitia with developing these capabilities stood out amongst the competition and, over the coming months, Envitia will develop the solution using an agile methodology to create a programme that can demonstrate how access to information can be improved for the military, through optimising the Chatbot digital assistant.

Nabil Lodey, Envitia CEO, said: “Envitia is delighted to be working on this next generation set of communication tools for tactical military teams in the MOD. It’s no longer enough to just access information. The vast amounts of data and information could easily swamp a decision maker so our Chatbot solution will filter out irrelevant material, and then provide the vital information that is needed for mission success. We look forward to taking this programme forward so that it can benefit the UK military.”