Under the agreement, Primordial Labs will integrate its Anura software more widely across the GDLS vehicle range. A crew member states a goal, along with any objectives and constraints, and Anura carries it out through the vehicle’s subsystems, among them sensors, displays, communications and uncrewed systems.
Some of those jobs would otherwise call for a dedicated operator station, the companies said. Anura runs entirely at the edge, with no cloud reachback, so it keeps working in contested environments where communications are denied.
Focus on crew workload
“We see natural-language control as a critical enabler of greater lethality with a smaller crew size, reduced physical workloads and increased cognitive performance for maneuver combat teams,” said Keith Barclay, vice president and general manager of U.S. operations at General Dynamics Land Systems. “Our partnership with Primordial Labs and the integration of Anura onto platforms such as the Abrams tank and our next-generation combat vehicles are about giving any soldier, in any formation, the ability to intuitively command complex systems.”
Until now, the companies said, each new capability on a combat vehicle has brought its own control scheme, more training and more work for the crew. Their answer is a single interface that takes in new subsystems and software updates as they arrive, which they say would let the Army and Marine Corps field technology across platforms as fast as it is developed.
“The Army has a need for any soldier, in any formation, to intuitively control any system,” said Lee Ritholtz, CEO of Primordial Labs. He added: “Partnering with GDLS puts Anura on the platforms that define America’s armored force.”
The companies did not disclose financial terms. Nor did they give a timeline for the integration.
