Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division hosted the Coastal Trident series of Advanced Naval Technology Exercises (ANTX-CT) INDIA event from Aug. 4 through 8 at the Port of Hueneme and the command’s Fathomwerx Lab. Eight companies tested unmanned and autonomous systems in early August as part of a summer series that ran more than a dozen demonstrations between June and September. Brendan Applegate, NSWC PHD’s principal investigator for the ANTX-CT program, said the exercise allowed industry to operate independently and collaborate to complete cooperative port and maritime security missions using Artificial Intelligence, and that the command was largely successful in achieving its objectives.
NODA AI Inc. and its autonomy software URZA were central to many demonstrations. In a contested logistics resupply scenario URZA connected eight systems across five other vendors to enable communication and coordinated action between heterogeneous drones. NODA AI’s chief of staff Taylor Dillenberger described URZA as a central Artificial Intelligence reasoning engine that dynamically creates robotic code to task allocate and synchronize assists across mixed teams of robots. Titan Dynamics used field data from the event to 3D print a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle overnight with its Vulcan mobile printing factory. Titan co-founder Noah Benton said the Prometheus software can autogenerate aircraft designs from mission data and Vulcan can print and assemble aircraft in a containerized mobile factory; the company’s UAVs can remain airborne for four to 10 hours and provided overwatch and target detection during the exercise.
Other participants included Darkhive, which flew Obelisk, an autonomous drone equipped with recognition software that classifies vessels and relays data to NODA AI, and Andrenam, which deployed an Artificial Intelligence-powered maritime sensing system on four buoys. Andrenam CEO Mat Cernosek said the buoys transmit data to cloud computing and can detect quiet unmanned underwater vessels from 200 to 300 yards and larger surface vessels more than 3 kilometers away. Teams positioned buoys around the port entrance to monitor traffic and potential incursions, highlighting applications for port officials and the Coast Guard for security and interdiction missions.
