WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. Army Research Lab made breakthroughs this summer on two neural networks projects that could assist commanders\u2019 decision-making on the battlefield and provide soldiers\u2019 health information through fibers in their uniform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The advancements come as the U.S. military is preparing for data-driven battle, in which gobs of data are transmitted across the battlespace, processed and used in a commander\u2019s decision-making. Neural networks are a combination of algorithms that work together to recognize patterns in data through a process similar to that of the human brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first project is working to provide a tool to battle commanders that quantifies uncertainty in data analysis using neural networks. Researchers associated with the Army Research Lab created a new framework for neural network processing that would use artificial intelligence to provide confidence ratings. The tool could enhance the ethical use of AI and provide commanders with a new level of confidence in their decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe idea is to provide some sort of uncertainty measurements from the AI system so that the human counterparts are able to acknowledge and realize that the AI is not going to be perfect, but we can understand sort of how certain it is, and then use that information to make more informed decisions,\u201d said Maggie Wigness, Army researcher and deputy collaborative alliance manager of the Internet of Battlefield Things Collaborative Research Alliance (IoBT CRA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several factors influence uncertainty around battlefield data and AI outputs, Wigness said. Data could be manipulated, it could have random \u201cnoise\u201d that messes with the algorithms or uncertainty could stem from a degraded sensor that an adversary attacked. To quantify uncertainty in the future, researchers categorized sources of uncertainty in military networks, reviewed frameworks to represent the unknown and created solutions to manage it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the Army works to enable multi-domain operations, in which the service contests adversaries across the five warfighting domains, data from across all five will have to be fused and integrated. The neural network work fits into the IoBT alliance\u2019s work that is \u201cfocused on processing data and establishing connections and communicating across a large network of sensors, those sensors could be sort of anywhere across these multi domains that need to then be fused together,\u201d Wigness said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Army researchers at the service\u2019s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a programmable fiber that could be sewn into soldier\u2019s uniforms in the future and provide biometric data that would help monitor soldier health. That fiber, according to the service, can sense, store, analyze and infer activity. The digital fiber technology is in the proof of concept phase, demonstrating that the fiber has memory capabilities. Researchers loaded a movie onto the fabric to show that it could store mass amounts of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the future, researchers want the fiber to be able to store algorithms that can analyze the data that it collects. According to an ARL post about the breakthrough, the fiber has a neural network of 1,650 connections and successfully collected 270 minutes of surface body temperature data. Using artificial intelligence in the lab, the fiber identified what type of activity the soldier was undertaking with 96 percent accuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually, researchers want the fiber to be able to generate and store power to run artificial intelligence analysis or communicate with sensors and communications systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can imagine if a soldier is non-responsive, we may be able to have communication with these wearable computers … where the soldier\u2019s uniform is communicating with Central Command or their home base on the battlefield,\u201d said James Burgess, Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies program manager for the research lab. \u201cSo if they\u2019re nonresponsive, we may know … whether they\u2019re bleeding, whether they\u2019re breathing, what their pulse rate is, so we would have some diagnostic information before we even reach the soldier with the rescue team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The capability is still \u201cvery early stage,\u201d Burgess said, and the team is aiming to have an impact on the battlefield by 2050. The capability will be an important piece of providing soldiers information on their physical state as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith the adrenaline flowing, it\u2019s really important for soldiers to know what\u2019s happening to them, their physiological state, and have warning buzzers, essentially, that go off [if] they\u2019re overheating or dehydrated, if they\u2019ve been exposed to something that is beginning to impair their cognitive or physical abilities,\u201d Burgess said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The lab made had breakthroughs on two artificial intelligence projects that could provide soldiers with helpful data on the future battlefield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":31986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":6,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"10":{"categories":["land","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"land"}}},"categories":[6,7,106,29,36,32],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3252],"class_list":["post-24877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-battlefield-tech","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-it-networks-battlefield-tech","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"Y2WA5ZXVS5GDPGBSL7UNUBD2IE","arc_canonical_url":"\/artificial-intelligence\/2021\/09\/03\/army-researchers-seek-to-provide-more-data-to-soldiers-through-two-projects\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n