AFWERX Autonomy Prime Selects Applied Intuition Defense to Integrate Simulation Tools With AFSIM

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 7, 2024 -- Applied Intuition Defense, a software solutions provider for defense autonomy, today announced that it was awarded a contract by AFVentures in a Direct to Phase II SBIR to integrate its simulation and synthetic data solutions with the Advanced Framework for Simulation, Integration, and Modeling (AFSIM), the de facto simulation tool used across the Department of Defense. The contract is evidence of Applied Intuition Defense’s ability to modify its commercial autonomy development toolchain to co-simulate with leading government-owned simulation environments to accelerate autonomy development.

Under the contract, Applied Intuition Defense will deliver a synthetic data generation toolkit that will allow the government to generate multi-modal synthetic data on all-domain assets and a functioning integration of Applied Intuition’s simulation tools with AFSIM. AFWERX Autonomy Prime and end customers will use this capability to generate physically accurate parameterized versions of synthetic data, allowing the U.S. Air Force to expand the volume of available training data and improve perception model performance in identifying adversary threat systems across the maritime, ground, and aerospace domains.

“Training artificial intelligence (AI) models requires massive amounts of data, but real-world data on adversary systems is often limited or impossible to collect,” said Peter Ludwig, Co-Founder and CTO of Applied Intuition. “Large volumes of varied, physically accurate synthetic data with perfect annotations enable perception system developers to quickly expand their corpus of available training data to improve model performance.”

Generating synthetic data is often a highly manual process, particularly when generated across a significant quantity of rare scenarios and adversary systems. Through this engagement, end users in the Air Force will be able to rapidly generate high-quality data, reducing the time and cost of implementation.

“To maintain America’s competitive military advantage, AFWERX must harness the potential of AI by collaborating with industry and providing extra capability to work already accomplished,” said Maj. Victor Lopez, AFWERX Spark robotics section chief.

“This contract builds on prior contracts between Applied Intuition Defense and AFWERX focused on accelerating the development velocity and delivery of target recognition capabilities, including contracts focused on aerial sensor optimization and synthetic data generation,” said Ludwig. “AFWERX Autonomy Prime continues to lead the way in enabling public-private partnerships, de-risking and validating the applicability of dual-use capabilities to national security applications in the Department of Defense.”

The contract demonstrates how Applied Intuition’s autonomy development solutions are able to integrate with existing government or commercial tools modularly, and is the latest evidence of how Applied Intuition’s commercially derived solutions can accelerate development, improve outcomes, and reduce costs for a vast range of production-level defense autonomy programs.

About Applied Intuition Defense

Applied Intuition Defense is a vehicle software supplier that accelerates the deployment of next-generation autonomous capabilities to the warfighter. Based out of Washington, DC, Applied Intuition Defense is a business of Applied Intuition, which provides an industry-leading development platform to test and validate advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving (AD) to 18 of the top 20 global automakers. Today, Applied Intuition Defense provides rapid, agile software development best practices from the commercial automotive industry to major programs across the Department of Defense.

About AFRL

The Air Force Research Laboratory is the primary scientific research and development center for the Department of the Air Force. AFRL plays an integral role in leading the discovery, development, and integration of affordable warfighting technologies for our air, space and cyberspace force. With a workforce of more than 12,500 across nine technology areas and 40 other operations across the globe, AFRL provides a diverse portfolio of science and technology ranging from fundamental to advanced research and technology development. For more information, visit www.afresearchlab.com.

About AFWERX

As the innovation arm of the DAF and a directorate within the Air Force Research Laboratory, AFWERX brings cutting-edge American ingenuity from small businesses and start-ups to address the most pressing challenges of the DAF. AFWERX employs approximately 370 military, civilian and contractor personnel at five hubs and sites executing an annual $1.4 billion budget. Since 2019, AFWERX has executed 6,028 new contracts worth more than $4 billion to strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base and drive faster technology transition to operational capability. For more information, visit: www.afwerx.com.  

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