Within the scope of an upstream study programme of the French Directorate General of Armaments (Direction générale de l’armement DGA) and European missile maker MBDA has developed a capacity for automatic object acquisition by imagery using artificial intelligence. This programme, named 2ACI, was trained using only computer-generated images before being integrated into an embedded system. It then demonstrated its effectiveness in detecting, recognising and identifying vehicles using infra-red imaging. This technology program has been conducted by MBDA together with the French start-up Kalray – a pioneer of processors for new intelligent systems.
On real images, the good performances obtained demonstrate that this system can be applied to any tactical context, day or night, by poor weather conditions, whether the vehicles are fixed or mobile, single or multiple. This operator assistance meets a ground operational requirement, but can also be extended to naval or air contexts. Through an ability to access a vast database, AI-empowered computer algorithms can increasingly perform these kinds of calculations. Those demonstrators have proved the operational efficiency of the 2ACI function and that it could be integrated into due course to the French Army combat system Scorpion, as well as to the Medium-Range Missile/MMP firing unit.
