U.S. naval school develops AI method to accurately assess drone threats

The U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) has developed a method that uses AI to accurately assess drone threats.

A press release on 14 February says the new method was developed in response to the recent proliferation of threats from inexpensive, uncrewed autonomous systems (UAS), or drones.

Researchers at the NPS are working with collaborators to automate critical parts of the tracking system used by laser weapon systems (LWS) to effectively neutralize hostile UAS.

Increasing capacity against hostile UAS

The aim of applying AI is to improve the capacity of LWS to rapidly detect and neutralize hostile UAS. 

Because of the numerous steps and procedures required to successfully engage an adversarial UAS, its operation by human agents can be time consuming, especially when many drones are involved. This is where the new system shines. 

It will improve target classification, pose estimation, aimpoint selection and aimpoint maintenance to improve overall capability of the LWS to effectively neutralize threats.

Distinguished Professor Brij Agrawal of the NPS Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, who leads the NPS team said:

“Defending against one drone isn’t a problem. But if there are multiple drones, then sending million-dollar interceptor missiles becomes a very expensive trade off because the drones are very cheap. The Navy has several LWS being developed and tested. LWS are cheap to fire but expensive to build. But once it’s built, then it can keep on firing, like a few dollars per shot.”

The system is being developed in collaboration with Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

By  placing the operator on-the-loop overseeing the tracking system instead of in-the-loop manually controlling it, the system can more accurately and quickly assess and neutralize threats.

The research is funded by the Joint Directed Energy Transition Office (DE-JTO) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and is expected to revolutionize aerial threat assessment and neutralization for the naval defense forces.

AI use in technology

Artificial intelligence has become rapidly popular and found uses in many ways in technology, some of which are unexpected.

As Techgaged reported last week, scientists have used the technology to develop asphalt that is self-healing to make longer lasting roads.

Meta is also using the technology to develop a way through which bots can read people’s minds and provide care and assistance to them even if they are unable to speak. 

These use cases are all geared towards improving the living conscious of humans and making life more worthwhile.