British geospatial and data company Envitia, which has expertise around applying AI and machine learning to complex data problems, along with its partner BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, has been selected to deliver this, one of the first AI projects for the Royal Navy.
Mine-hunting is currently carried out by a fleet of mine-hunter ships using sonar to survey seabeds looking for anomalies. But these new AI-enabled submersibles will be much quicker in being able to scan an object, identify the threat, and make decisions about what to do with it.
The Royal Navy’s Route Survey & Tasking Analysis (RSTA) project will adopt autonomous vehicles, open architectures and AI, with the intention to deliver an unmanned capability for routine mine countermeasure tasks in UK waters by the year 2022.