Verizon's Tactical Humanitarian Operations Response vehicle. Verizon

Marine Corps Meets THOR, Verizon’s Futuristic 5G-Enabled Response Vehicle

submited by

Style Pass

2021-07-14 20:00:07

Verizon's Tactical Humanitarian Operations Response vehicle. Verizon

This week, the Marine Corps and Verizon deployed the latter’s new, next-generation communication and disaster response prototype—a Tactical Humanitarian Operations Response vehicle, or THOR—at their joint 5G ‘living lab’ on a California military base.

THOR was built to operate under any network in any environment, from dense forests during wildfires to remote military settings.

“At Marine Corps Air Station Miramar this week, we demonstrated THOR’s ability to enable a fully-operational 5G network that allowed: autonomous robot communication to a self-driving battery delivery vehicle, video streaming between people and vehicles in the field, data from sensors on devices operating in an austere environment, and 5G mobile edge computing being used to help decision-makers by providing a single operating picture of all of these data feeds in real-time,” Director of Verizon 5G Labs Christian Guirnalda explained Friday.

Guirnalda and Director of Verizon Response and Public Safety Operations Cory Davis briefed Nextgov on the prototype and its potential impact across the defense and first response landscapes.