HACKER Q&A
📣 Jeibros

How could military drones visually identify specific targets (enemies)?


I'm seeing these days news about YOLO object detection platform trained with deep-learning. If this is the SOTA of the technology, how could a military drone detect a target autonomously? I mean, how could it differ enemies among civilians, or identify a specific person?

I do believe that autonomously drones will just make kill chain faster, but human intervention will be necessary for ages yet, and cannot imagine how an visual algorithm could differ between a Russian or an Ukranian soldier, for instance.

  👤 PaulHoule Accepted Answer ✓
Please note that this is by no means a new situation, this weapon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBU-97_Sensor_Fuzed_Weapon

contained submunitions that autonomously target tanks, and visual + radar target recognition was a feature in both the Pershing 2 and Tomahawk missiles.

👤 abudabi123
> How can you differ one tank from the other?

Multipoint sensor fusion contains track-data the autonomy calculates a level of confidence to decide friend from foe in the battlespace? The hole in that idea is the fog of war situation where the vehicle is unable to receive the world update to confidently interpret the moving parts onboard sensors perceive.

👤 rolph
it isnt just visual guidance. meta data, and geolocation statistics, are quickly analyzed to whittle down all other possibilities, until visual targeting takes over.