BrainChip Holdings said to be the world’s first commercial producer of ultra-low power, fully digital, event-based, neuromorphic AI is partnering with Raytheon to service a contract for $1.8M from the Air Force Research Laboratory on neuromorphic radar signalling processing.
Raytheon will deliver services and support as a partner with BrainChip for the completion of the contract award. The Air Force Research Labs contract, under the topic number AF242-D015, is titled “Mapping Complex Sensor Signal Processing Algorithms onto Neuromorphic Chips.”
The project focuses on a specific type of radar processing known as micro-Doppler signature analysis, which offers unprecedented activity discrimination capabilities.
Neuromorphic hardware represents a low-power solution for edge devices, consuming significantly less energy than traditional computing hardware for signal processing and artificial intelligence tasks.
If successful, this project could embed sophisticated radar processing solutions in power-constrained and thermally constrained weapon systems, such as missiles, drones and drone defense systems.
BrainChip’s Akida processor is a computing architecture that is designed to process neural networks and machine learning algorithms at ultra-low power consumption, making it ideal for edge computing applications.
The company’s neuromorphic technology improves the cognitive communication capabilities on size, weight and power & cost (SWaP-C)-constrained platforms such as military, spacecraft and robotics for commercial and government markets.
“Radar signalling processing will be implemented on ever-smaller mobile platforms, so minimizing system SWaP-C is critical,” said Sean Hehir (pictured), CEO of BrainChip. “This improved radar signaling performance per watt for the Air Force Research Laboratory showcases how neuromorphic computing can achieve significant benefits in the most mission-critical use cases.”
