Chinese, US scientists develop AI technology to help detect submarines in uncharted waters
- Researchers say system should allow them to track any sound-emitting source – from nuclear subs to whales – using a simple listening device mounted on a buoy, underwater drone or ship
- Breakthrough builds on previous work by team from Beijing and San Diego
The technology builds on earlier work by the team, led by Dr Niu Haiqiang from the Institute of Acoustics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, which saw them develop a deep-learning algorithm that could improve the speed and precision of detection.
The algorithm, however, needs a large amount of data to work, so its use is limited to waters that have already been fully charted. In contrast, the upgrade works in all waters, charted or otherwise.
Niu and his colleagues, who included scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, started by developing a simulator to generate a wide range of virtual environments from which the algorithm was able to learn.
Once it had assimilated that information, the simulator was able to analyse real-life data taken from the world’s oceans and seas, the team said in a paper published in the July issue of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
It is now able to help a single hydrophone locate more than 80 per cent of underwater targets within an uncharted area with a margin of error of less than 10 metres (33 feet), the paper said.
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The researchers said the new technology should allow them to track any sound-emitting source – be it a nuclear submarine, a whale or even an emergency beeper from a crashed aircraft – using a simple listening device mounted on a buoy, underwater drone or ship.
The scientists worked together to improve the sensitivity and accuracy of passive underwater surveillance technology, according to the academy’s website.
Locating targets in unfamiliar waters is challenging because the AI relies on environmental data parameters such as underwater currents and seabed landscapes. But obtaining such information is not easy, and often impossible.
For instance, the United States does not allow China to collect information in waters close to its west coast, while Beijing forbids the US from getting too close to its military facilities in the South China Sea.
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Professor Zhang Renhe, a researcher at the Institute of Acoustics who was not involved in the study, said the latest development was encouraging.
“AI can be a useful assistant to underwater target recognition,” he said. “In a way it is similar to the speech recognition technology on our mobile phones.”
But he said scientists were still wrestling with exactly how the technology worked.
“It is like a black box with some inner workings that are still unexplained,” he said.
Researchers were now working on ways to combine the new AI technology with the physical models for underwater target detection that have been developed in recent decades, Zhang said.
“This is a new frontier for fundamental science,” he said. “It requires international cooperation.”
