Chinese AI team claims big win in battle to teach dogfights to drones
- System developed in Sichuan cuts ‘training’ time by learning 5,000 times faster than US counterpart
- Drones expected to play a bigger combat role will mean making computer chips work smarter
In domestic peer-reviewed journal Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica on Friday, the researchers said the higher learning speed could help the drone identify “cheating manoeuvres” by human pilots, reduce a computer chip’s workload and outperform opponents in complex, large-scale air combat.
“The algorithm in this paper can be extended to an air combat with multiple AI agents, which will be closer to the real situation in a battlefield,” the researchers at the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Centre in Mianyang, Sichuan province, said.
The researchers put the system to the test by simulating combat between a drone and a jet fighter.
In a similar dogfight competition in the United States in 2020, deep-learning AI systems were pitted against F-16 fighter jet pilots, with Maryland-based company Heron Systems declared the ultimate winner.
The Heron system defeated the pilots in all five dogfights, taking more than 4 billion rounds of “training” to achieve the result.
The researchers in Sichuan said their system took just 800,000 simulations to win most of its encounters.