6 juillet 2023 | International, Terrestre
The military robots are coming — at some point
Unmanned ground vehicle technology has been progressing, but familiar obstacles remain.
28 août 2020 | International, Naval
ALBUQUERQUE: The Navy is using Google Cloud to speed up a basic but time consuming task: finding and identifying rust. This approach has already been applied to inspect wind turbines and find potholes in roads, and promises advantages both in speed of inspection and in future predictive maintenance.
“The AI technology behind this enabled the US Navy to quickly and seamlessly examine tens of thousands of images to prioritize the needs to be repaired immediately and or later on,” Mike Daniels, vice president of Global Public Sector, Google Cloud, told me in an interview.
While Google was unwilling to disclose the exact value of the contract, the promise is that speedy, AI-enabled inspections will lower labor and material costs of inspection and repair enough to more than justify the expenditure on inspection AI.
“The tools we're providing can not only save the Navy billions each year, but significantly improve readiness and speed deployment,” said Daniels. “And this is a physical job right now. We're improving results for the inspectors.”
If AI-facilitated rust inspection can reduce the amount of time a ship needs to stay in harbor for repairs, it can narrow the window in which catastrophic disasters, like the fire which tore apart the Bonhomme Richard, can happen.
This work is being done through Simple Technology Solutions (STS), who was awarded the work as a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research project. To train the AI, STS flew a drone on inspections to get images of rust. Next, STS combined these drone-filmed images with public domain images of ships, and uploaded both sets to a Google Cloud server.
Specifically, the inspections will look for broad area rust and corrosion, as well as subtler damage that human eyes might skip over, like pitting or focused damage.
Using native machine learning built into the Google Cloud, STS could then train the algorithm to process, understand and identify rust in the images. This is an iterative process, one where every uploaded inspection improves the accuracy of the next inspection.
“There's no classified data that's going to be handled as part of this project,” said Daniels, noting that Google offers a high level of protection for images stored in its cloud by default.
As we have seen in the past, aggregated unclassified data can sometimes be enough to reveal classified information, but the immediate utility of cloud-powered inspections should offset any distant concern of weakness revealed through corrosion maintenance.
Most importantly, the inspection tool promises savings in time. A widely-cited 2014 report from the US Navy attributed the cost of fighting rust and corrosion at $3 billion.
Some of that cost is hard to shake: the paint used to cover rust-scrapped areas can cost as much as $250 a gallon. Catching corrosion quickly and early shortens the amount of time humans need to work to fix a vessel, and should reduce the area that needs repair for each inspection.
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/navy-turns-to-ai-to-save-billions-in-fight-against-rust/
 
					6 juillet 2023 | International, Terrestre
Unmanned ground vehicle technology has been progressing, but familiar obstacles remain.
 
					24 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial
April 23, 2020 - Saab has signed a three-year contract with the UK Ministry of Defence for the provision of support and services to the Direct Fire Weapon Effects Simulator (DFWES) capability. The contract valued at 320 MSEK came into effect on April 1, 2020. DFWES is a laser based Tactical Engagement Simulation (TES) system, that allows dismounted and mounted soldiers to simulate the effects of direct and indirect fire. This order includes support and maintenance for the British Army's DFWES capability. In addition to the existing sites in the UK, Canada and Germany, this contract includes continuation of support to the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines, the Infantry Battle School in Brecon and the Infantry Training Centre Catterick. “We are proud that Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) continues to choose Saab as a partner to provide the British military with the DFWES capability. This ensures that British soldiers and marines can continue to receive the best possible support for their training and is a testament to the close and long-term cooperation between Saab and the UK”, says Magnus Lewis Olson, Head of Saab in the United Kingdom. The high fidelity, interoperable and deployable DFWES capability supports individual, collective and mission specific training around the globe. For further information, please contact: Saab Press Centre, +46 (0)734 180 018 presscentre@saabgroup.com Saab serves the global market with world-leading products, services and solutions within military defence and civil security. Saab has operations and employees on all continents around the world. Through innovative, collaborative and pragmatic thinking, Saab develops, adopts and improves new technology to meet customers' changing needs. View source version on Saab: https://saabgroup.com/media/news-press/news/2020-04/saab-signs-support-contract-with-british-army/
 
					6 avril 2022 | International, Terrestre
The Czech Republic is looking to add a slew of new helicopters in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and new information on what caused a B-2 steal...