The Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories is developing an artificial neural network that uses dragonflies’ hunting capacity as a basis for enabling missiles to intercept targets such as hypersonic platforms, C4ISRnet reported Tuesday.
Sandia’s Frances Chance is leading the yearlong effort to develop and test algorithms based on dragonflies’ cognitive functions, which include the ability to react to maneuvers within 50 milliseconds. If successful, findings from the project which will be passed on to scientists for weapons development.
“The challenge then is: Is there anything that we can learn from how dragonflies do this that we can then bring to the next generation of missiles, or maybe even the next-next generation of missiles?†she said. The project is funded by Sandia’s Autonomy for Hypersonics Mission Campaign and is slated to conclude in September.