DASA doles out funding for Intelligent Ship Phase 2

Acting on behalf of the UK MoD Defence Science Technology Laboratory (Dstl), the  Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) has awarded £3 million ($4.08 million) in funding grants for Phase 2 of the Intelligent Ship programme.

Recipients included CGI IT UK, Decision Lab, DIEM Analytics, Frazer Nash Consultancy, Montvieux, Nottingham Trent University, Rolls-Royce and SeeByte.

The aim is to enhance decision-making, mission planning and automation using AI, resulting in technologies for use on naval vessels from 2030.

Funded proposals include research into how a network of AI-enabled decision-making agents would work alongside humans at sea, for functions such as power and propulsion system management.

Frazer Nash will continue to develop its AI-enabled Internal Battle Intelligence Software predictive damage control decision tool, experimenting with it in a highly collaborative, simulated environment.

Dstl project technical authority Julia Tagg said: ‘The Intelligent Ship project aims to demonstrate ways of bringing together multiple AI applications to make collective decisions, with and without human operator judgement.’

She added: ‘We hope that the use of AI in the future will lead to timely, more informed and trusted decision-making and planning, within complex operating and data environments.’

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