We’re delighted to receive the E&T Innovation Award for ‘Intelligent Systems’ for our Artificial Intelligence (AI) threat monitoring system, STARTLE®. The awards, hosted by IET, celebrate cutting-edge new innovations, and recognise global engineers and technologists who are making dramatic improvements across modern society.
STARTLE® has been a landmark development for Roke. Since it was originally conceived in 2007, it has come a long way – having been successfully applied to Situational Awareness problems as diverse as Maritime Anti-Air Warfare and Cyber Defence.
The system has been developed from concept all the way through to operation, culminating in on-board demonstrations as part of the Formidable Shield 2021 Navy exercise in May.
This eXplainable (X) AI architecture enables operators to monitor and rapidly react to threats across multiple sensor feeds. Key benefits include reducing operator fatigue associated with cognitive burden and maximising operational effectiveness. STARTLE® does this by detecting and characterising threats autonomously, and automatically directing sensor assets to enhance threat assessment. This early recognition enables operators to respond quickly and focuses on explainability, so that human operators can gain confidence in the recommendations being made.
STARTLE® was also previously part of a successful sea trial with the Royal Navy undertaking air and surface threat detection in a maritime environment. In 2016, Perception, a previous version of STARTLE®, was trialled in a range of organisations, and was deployed by SERCO worldwide as a network security system.
STARTLE® was developed with internal investment from Roke and with funding from Chemring Group, Dstl and the Royal Navy.
Paul MacGregor, Managing Director of Roke commented:
“Roke is extremely honoured to receive this award and recognition from the IET. The success of STARTLE® is down to the vision and commitment of a team of Rokies who developed the system from the ground up. It’s a great example of how we’re able to innovate from concept to operational deployment, to solve the most complex of problems for our customers.
“Our hope is that STARTLE® will provide sustained strategic information advantage, helping to ensure that our military is well-equipped to anticipate, prevent and respond to new and emerging challenges.”
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