Roke Manor Research Ltd (Roke), a Chemring Group company, has developed the world’s first threat monitoring system for autonomous vehicles that emulates a mammal’s conditioned fear-response mechanism.

The STARTLE system uses a combination of artificial neural network and diagnostic expert systems to continually monitor and assess potential threats.

“Startle delivers local autonomy to a vehicle by providing a mechanism for machine situation awareness to efficiently detect and assess potential threats. This allows vehicle sensing and processing resources to be devoted to the assigned task, but if a threat is detected it will cue the other systems to deal with it swiftly before continuing its mission. These vital seconds could be the difference between mission failure and success.”

Source: Neuroscience News