BAE Systems eyes further enhancements to MAPLE AI tool

BAE Systems' FAST Labs organization successfully demonstrates artificial intelligence technology at Obangame Express event. (BAE Systems )

BAE Systems plans to further enhance its Multi-Int Analytics for Pattern Learning and Exploitation (MAPLE) data mining and analysis tool, with the aim of handling more data and boosting the technology's autonomous capabilities, the company told Janes .

MAPLE uses machine learning (ML) analytics to process and analyse data for a wide range of military applications. Most recently, the company integrated MAPLE with the US Navy's (USN's) SeaVision maritime situational awareness tool, using it to analyse low-level detection of maritime activities like fishing.

BAE Systems aims to further advance the technology in the coming years, said Scott Morales, technology development manager at BAE Systems' FAST Labs. The goal is to enable MAPLE to analyse more data, while doing so closer to the source of the data: for example, embedding MAPLE onto a sensor, rather than transferring that sensor's data to a hub. “That's a next step for the application,” he said.

BAE Systems now offers MAPLE ‘as a service' (MaaS). This version was tested with the USN during the Obangame Express event in 2021, organised by US Africa Command (AFRICOM). Analysing vessel behaviour is a good use of the tool, said Neil Bomberger, chief scientist at FAST Labs, partly due to the sheer scale of data that is available, such as commercial electro-optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery, radio frequency, and automatic identification system data.

“There's a lot of different levels to it that you have to address,” said Bomberger. “There's the individual behaviour of a fishing vessel, then there's interpreting that behaviour and putting it in context. Is it in a prohibited region? What is its relationship to other vessels?”