AUTOMATION AND ROBOTICS

AI in Military Drones and UAVs

– Current Applications
In this article, we’ll take a look at several military drones and UAVs with AI
capabilities. There are a variety of use cases for AI when it comes to drone
technology. The military seems to commonly apply AI for allowing its drones to
fly on their own, which requires machine vision.

The US military seems to have started using drones in the early 2000s, and
now they are starting to apply AI to these drones for possibly greater
advantage. The military uses drones for ISR (Intelligence, Security and
Reconnaissance) missions every day.

This article covers four real-world use cases from four military defense
contractors that claim to offer either drones or the AI software behind them:

 Sheild.AI offers Nova, an autonomous drone for indoor navigation

 AeroVironment offers the Raven series, the world’s most widespread

military drone

 Lockheed Martin offers Desert Hawk III, a drone that can purportedly train
operators on how to use it in the field

 Neurala offers Neurala Brain, an AI software currently that could allow

military drones to conduct reconnaissance and patrol missions

We’ll begin this report with a general overview of AI military drones and UAVs:

AI Drones and UAVs in the Military – Insights Up Front

Drone technology itself is a relatively new area of military technology, but

military engineers took to combining drones with artificial intelligence rather
quickly to create a product that in some cases might be comparable to the
performance of human reconnaissance teams. Shield.AI, AeroVironment, and
Lockheed Martin all showcase how military defense contractors are combining
current computer vision technology and image recognition with drones to
solve military problems without the need of endangering human
life. Sheild.AI’s drone can purportedly navigate unknown lands without the
need for GPS tracking.

Autonomous drones could allow military operators to focus their own efforts on
more pressing actions that engage their skillsets. As an example, autonomous
drones can be used to monitor the territory a squad of soldiers has just
cleared in combat, making sure enemy reinforcements are not planning to
catch them by surprise.

There may be many benefits to autonomous drones on the battlefield and

those benefits, if harnessed correctly, could save the lives of operators and
human resources of a military. This may be why the field of drones and
artificial intelligence is bursting with real-world application and companies that
have excellent real-world traction.

All of the companies in this report employ CTOs from premier universities, and
the US Department of Defense is already using some of their products. 

We’ll start our analysis of the state of AI-based drone technology in the military
with a general explanation of how a drone might fly on its own:

How Autonomous Drones and UAVs Work Using Machine Vision

All of the drones highlighted in this report can fly without a human operator.
Although there are differences in the exact design and abilities of each drone,
in general, autonomous drones are similarly trained.

Implementing artificial intelligence for drones is a combination of mechanical

devices, navigational instruments, and machine vision. The AI behind the
drone needs to be trained using a supervised learning process. 

First, a human operator pilots the drone themselves to collect visual and
spatial data from the cameras and lidars; this operation is recorded. People
then label objects in the resulting recordings, such as a wall, mountain, or
cliffside. The newly labeled recordings are then run through the machine
learning algorithm that is planned to operate the drone.
This would train the drone to distinguish between objects within the field of
vision of its mounted camera. The algorithm would also correlate instances of
turns and stops to the objects that the drone sees in its camera’s field of
vision. This would in essence train the drone to stop or turn when it
encountered certain objects.

The vehicle could then get a command to move to a new location. The
algorithm behind the software would then be able to move itself and its
operational payload (for example, the listening devices it is equipped with)
safely to the determined location. In the case of autonomous drones, many of
them utilize GPS technology and tracking to allow operators to plot the
general path of the drone’s flight. As the drone is operating autonomously, the
exact flight pattern and maneuvers would be left to the artificial intelligence.

For more on how machine vision systems are trained for self-driving cars,
read our section on the topic on our report on crowdsourced machine vision
training.

We’ll begin our analysis of autonomous drones and the machine vision

technology behind them with AeroVironment’s Raven series of UAVs:

Autonomous Drones Available to the Military

AeroVironment
AeroVironment offers a series of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which the
company claims can fly along a route using computer vision and GPS
coordination. The UAV’s GPS controller can map the drone’s
routes. AeroVironment claims its Raven series of UAVs is the most widely
used UAV in the world.

The below photo shows an Army sergeant launching a drone in the Raven
series:

An army seargent launches the RQ-11 Raven, courtesy of Fire Aviation

Most of AeroVironment’s line of UAV products, including the Raven series, is
designed to be operated and used in combat situations by a single person in
the field. According to the company, military personnel in the field can
assemble the drone in 5 minutes and toss it into the air to deploy it, as shown
in the image above. Traditionally, teams of military operators work together on
UAV missions; some teams maintain the drone, while others pilot or plot the
drone’s flight course.

Such a UAV could give military troops the capability to collect data that could
allow them to move faster and check if they are being pursued during tactical
reconnaissance, tracking, combat assessment, and cartographic missions.
Drones could allow operators to make decisions without being concerned that
they might be ambushed from the rear, for example.

The US military started using the Raven series in 2004, and it is currently in
the field today. The US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corp all use The
Raven series. The Royal Canadian Navy has also recently ordered
AeroVironment’s Puma series of UAV for maritime use.

Andrew Browning is Program Director of Autonomy at

AeroVironment. He holds a PhD in Statistical and Computational
Monitoring from Boston University  Previously, Browning served as an
autonomous technologies consultant.

Lockheed Martin
We covered Lockheed Martin’s numerous AI endeavors in our report
on Lockheed Martin’s AI Applications for the Military – An Overview.

Lockheed Martin offers the Desert Hawk III, a drone developed for use in the
field by a single operator, similar to Aerovironment’s Raven series. Lockheed
Martin’s Desert Hawk III can purportedly plan its flight path ahead of time and
can train a new operator on how to operate and use it in the field. It is unclear
what this training looks like or how effective it might be.

Below is a short 2-minute video demonstrating the launch of the Desert Hawk

III:

Lockheed Martin was awarded a contract with the United Kingdom’s Ministry
of Defense during the War in Afghanistan. The Desert Hawk III is currently
under “Full Operating Capacity” status with the United Kingdom’s Ministry of
Defense.

UK Defence Minister Philip Dunne said, “Desert Hawk has proved its worth on
operations in Afghanistan, providing our Armed Forces with vital intelligence
and allowing our commanders to stay one step ahead of the enemy.”
Sheild.AI
Sheild.AI offers Nova, an autonomous quadrotor drone that runs the
company’s Hivemind software. The quadrotor drone design uses four
propeller turbines to achieve thrust as opposed to the fixed wing design of the
larger UAV’s commonly used in the military.

Sheild.AI claims Hivemind can help military operators use drones to explore
GPS-denied areas, such as the interior of buildings and caves, to gather
mission intelligence.

Below is a short  2-minute video demonstrating how Nova  flies and the

display system Nova shares with its operator:

We could not determine if any military uses Hivemind yet, but Shield.AI has
raised $13.1 million in venture funding from Andreessen Horowitz and
Bloomberg Beta.

Nathan Michael is CTO at Shield.AI. He holds a PhD in Mechanical

Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, Michael served
as an associate research professor at Carnegie Mellon. Nathan Michael his
authored 140 publications on control, perception, and cognition for robotic
systems.

Machine Vision and Image Recognition for Autonomous Drones and UAVs

Neurala Brain
Neurala offers Neurala Brain, a namesake software which it claims helps
drones equipped with cameras recognize and identify predetermined targets
and then alert a human operator. Neurala claims it’s software can comb
through crowds to find and identify persons of interest. It can also inspect
large industrial equipment, like telephone towers, and generate a real-time
damage report.

Below is a short 1-minute video demonstrating how Neurala Brain could find a

missing person in a crowd:

The company states the machine learning model behind the software was
trained on thousands of labeled images, such as photos of people in a crowd.
These labeled images would then be run through the software’s machine
learning algorithm. This would have trained the algorithm to discern the
sequences and patterns of 1’s and 0’s that, to the human eye, form the image
of the content its been trained on, such as a person amongst a crowd.

This also likely requires facial recognition, which comes with an additional
layer of training. Photos of specific people, likely taken from social media or
government databases, would need to be run through the machine learning
algorithm as well. This would essentially train the software to identify persons
of interest amongst a crowd.

When equipped to a military drone, the software could identify a specific target
in the field. The system then alerts a human operator that the target may have
been located.

Neurala claims their software uses fewer data and needs less time to train,
“requiring only 20% of images per class typically needed and 20 minutes
compared to days.”  Image recognition training typically requires great
quantities of labeled image or video data. It’s unclear how accurate their
software could be if it is trained on fewer images.

Neurala lists Motorola as one of their partners for the creation of the Neurala

Brain.

Anatoli Gorchet is a co-founder and CTO at  Neurala. He holds a PhD in

cognitive and neural systems from Boston University.
Previously, Gorchet served as research professor at  Boston University. We’ve
previously interviewed Neurala’s CEO Massimilano Versace on the topic
of machine vision in heavy industry.