Sentient AI will spend much of AUSA in Washington, DC, next week talking about recent flight trials conducted for the Australian Defence Force of the company’s Visual Detection and Ranging (ViDAR) sensor.
The trials demonstrated the AI-enabled optical sensor’s capabilities to detect targets from high operating altitudes of 30,000 feet and to provide persistent wide-area motion imagery for long-range ISR missions. The company claims that ViDAR’s deep learning and computer vision solution offers faster processing and more accurate detection, fully meeting the ADF’s requirements for effective methods of detecting, locating and tracking small objects in complex environments, achieving results up to 30 times faster than current HD turret-based capabilities.
The company believes this development is well timed: Australia, the United Kingdom and United States are now engaging in strengthening AUKUS ties, with Pillar 2 of the strategic industrial agreement focusing on AI collaboration. One desired outcome will be exploiting data diversity, enhancing detection and classification accuracy and thereby enabling better decision-making in environments in which available information reaches very high densities. Operator benefits include improved versatility to provide joint forces with land and maritime capabilities, high accuracy data to detect, locate, classify and track at high altitude and the fact that ViDAR is platform agnostic.
“The capability sets demonstrated not only met, and in many cases exceeded the mission objectives, but also importantly provided a road map for US and allied forces deployment of advanced, low signature sensor solutions with onboard processing,” said Chief Technology Officer, Callum McGregor. “Clearly the modularity and interoperability of Sentient’s technologies for AUKUS Pillar 2 sets the scene for a raft of integration on crewed and uncrewed airborne platforms”.
“Lessons learnt in Ukraine demonstrate the need for real-time intelligence – and that demands AI-enabled surveillance technologies to flag targets of interest before they become threats,” said Brent Bergen, US Business Development Director.
For more information: www.sentientvision.com
(Image: With close to 4,500 systems deployed, Sentient’s AI_enabled sensor edge solutions for wide area motion imagery offer proven detection and identification capabilities in both land and maritime operations. Credit: Sentient Vision)
