Increasing efficiencies in maritime patrols is increasingly important. Israeli firm Bird AeroSystems recently launched OSCAR, an autonomous multi-sensor maritime awareness system, to help with that.

Increasing efficiencies in maritime patrols is increasingly important. Israeli firm Bird AeroSystems recently launched OSCAR, an autonomous multi-sensor maritime awareness system, to help with this.

Shaul Mazor, VP Marketing and Business Development, Bird Aerosystems, explained that OSCAR “detects and [alerts] customers to any suspicious activity that happens within their maritime domain, and allows them to then increase their awareness and deploy their maritime assets in a much more effective way.”

He added: “[On a] maritime patrol mission, usually [there are] thousands of targets and the big question is: which of them are a suspicious targets.”

Machine learning

The fully autonomous and advanced multi-sensor OSCAR system, which integrates with the ASIO Maritime Special Mission Aircraft solution,  applies machine-learning (ML) algorithms on real-time data sources such as satellite and terrestrial AIS, satellite SAR/EO/IR, LRIT, coastal radars, tactical sensors and more. ML detects, analyses and prioritises suspicious vessels while providing automatic alerts to the user once these threats are found.

“This cycle goes on, allowing the system to learn,” said Mazor.

He commented: “OSCAR is already deployed by the first customer. Now, we are fine-tuning the algorithms for other customers as well.”

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