Lakehurst PATRIOT team wins NISE Outstanding Project Award

ByAdamHochron

Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division

The Panoramic Asset Tracking of Realtime Information for the Ouija Tabletop (PATRIOT) team from Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division Lakehurst (NAWCAD LKE) won the FY22 Naval Innovative Science and Engineering (NISE)OutstandingProjectAwardforBasic and Applied Research during a ceremony March23

The PATRIOT team was selected out of 81totalBasicandAppliedResearchprojects intheNISEportfoliofromacrossNAWCAD forfiscalyear2022 PATRIOT uses cameras and artificial intelligence to auto-populate a ship’s ouija board,whichidentifiesplanesandhelicopters on the deck of an aircraft carrier. For many years, the board used physical pieces toidentifyaircraftlocationswiththehelpof Sailorspositionedaroundtheship However, PATRIOTandothertechnologicaladvances like the Aviation Data Management and Control System (ADMACS) could revolutionizeaircrafttrackingontheflightdeck

Over the past year, the team, under the direction of Science & Technology Artificial Intelligence Lead Ari Goodman, tested the technology in more complex scenarios, includingusingmoreaircraftandrotorcraft varieties aircraftconfigurations,anddifferentvisualenvironments

ThePATRIOTteamisanotherexample of the critical, forward-thinking work done here at Lakehurst to support our warfighters,” said Kathleen P. Donnelly, NAWCAD LKE executive director. “As we work to ensure the safety and efficiency of our deployed Sailors and Marines, PATRIOT is anothertooltobolsterthateffortandbenefit the fleet.” Mark Husni, the Science and Technology lead at NAWCAD Lakehurst, said the project could improve a critical missionreadinessissueforthefleet.

“For years, we’ve had to do this manually Youstickakiduphighinvulture’srow, and he or she is looking at the flight deck. Duringthedaysofplastictemplatesonouija boards,theywereradioingtheaircraftpositions,”Husnisaid “NowwehaveADMACS so there’s a flat panel display, but we’re still manually pushing around templates It’s hard to keep up because multiple aircraft are moving around, and it’s a very dynamic environment.”

Goodman said the short-term benefit of a system like PATRIOT is freeing up time for the Sailors to do other tasks on the ship

But he said there could be long-term implicationsaswell

“It would enable multiple logistical optimization and data-collecting capabilities,” Goodman said. “If you have PATRIOT looking at the flight deck where all support equipmentand aircraft are in real-time and loggingthat,you’dbeabletoknowwhatany real bottlenecks are in terms of sortie rates andhavethatdatatobackitup.”

Husni said it was “heartening” to see the PATRIOTprogrammakeasmuchprogress astheyhave,showingacompellingproofof concept that can help bring the technology closer to reality. Goodman said he appreciated his team’s work, and noted that many people in various fields contributed to the system’sdevelopment