Researchers at the U.S. Army are working on two artificial intelligence projects to improve communications between warfighters and AI systems, C4ISRNET reported Wednesday.

The Joint Understanding and Dialogue Interface (JUDI) and Transparent Multi-Modal Crew Interface Designs projects support the Army’s efforts for its next-generation combat vehicle modernization initiatives. JUDI is an AI system designed to understand a soldier’s intent when providing verbal instructions to a robot.

Matthew Marge, a computer scientist at the Army Research Laboratory, said JUDI could help improve situational awareness of warfighters and is slated for field testing in September. The Transparent Multi-Modal Crew Interface Designs project seeks to help service personnel better understand why AI platforms make decisions and may prove useful in mission planning.

“We’re looking at ways of improving the ability of AI to communicate information to the soldier to show the soldier what it’s thinking and what it’s doing so it’s more predictable and trustworthy,” Brandon Perelman, a research psychologist at the ARL, said of the second project. “Because we know that … if soldiers don’t understand why the AI is doing something and it fails, they’re not going to trust it. And if they don’t trust it, they’re not going to use it.”

Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Wright Brothers Institute have partnered to virtually administer a competition through which university students exhibit skills in communications technology.

This year’s Beyond 5G University Challenge tasks its participants to develop applications for software-defined radios and networks, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base said Tuesday.

“Students get the opportunity to build real-world, relevant skills in using and programming SDRs,” said Stephen Hary, the challenge’s program manager who also serves as the lead for enabling sensor devices and components core technical competency at AFRL’s sensors directorate.

The effort aims to strengthen students’ capacity to analyze and address technical issues related to the competition’s tackled areas. The event’s hosts are interested to launch the competition again next year.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is set to hold a free online training program aimed at refining the data science skills of up to 60 government personnel starting in mid-September 2020, FedScoop reported Tuesday.

Under the Federal Data Science Training Program, the 24 agencies covered by the Chief Financial Officers Act will secure two to three spots for the initiative that will cover topic areas such as graph analytics, coding, data ethics and visualization techniques.

Program participants will undergo eight hours of training every week to be followed by a two-month capstone effort in February.

Denis Ortega, a fellow at the White House Leadership Development Program, said at an ATARC event that the capstone phase will provide a more “hands-on” approach and involve datasets for COVID-19 relief.

“Because we know that large datasets were created and established over the last seven and eight months, we’re going to leverage that data,” Ortega noted.

The training initiative builds on OMB's data science pilot program for the Census Bureau launched in January 2020 as well as the Federal Cybersecurity Reskilling Academy.

The U.S. Navy has partnered with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to accelerate research into unmanned maritime systems that will be used for government, private and academic applications.

NOAA said Tuesday that the agreement is aimed at expanding research and development activities involving unmanned platforms in coastal and ocean waters to support the data gathering efforts of both the agency and the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (NMOC).

Work under the partnership will be used to inform R&D programs in topic areas such as hurricane prediction, weather forecasting, climate analysis, environmental protection and marine resource sustainability. Research activities will additionally support NMOC's studies on the ocean’s physical environment for a range of Navy missions, according to NOAA.

“This agreement lays the foundation for collaboration, engagement, and coordination between NOAA and the U.S. Navy that our nation has never seen before,” said Rear. Adm. John Okon, commander of NMOC. “It will help us take advantage of each other’s strengths to advance each of our strategic and operational mission priorities.”

The agreement builds on the White House Summit on Partnerships in Ocean Science and Technology in 2019 as well as the Commercial Engagement Through Ocean Technology Act of 2018.

Two teams have received $57.5 million in funds from the Department of Energy (DoE) to create new scientific approaches that employ high-performance computing capabilities under the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program.

A team led by Argonne National Laboratory will explore community outreach that will support scientists through application development, while Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's team will study the development of mathematical techniques, DOE said Tuesday.

The selected teams are composed of researchers from academia, national laboratories and industry. The SciDAC program seeks to address gaps in various areas such as condensed matter physics, chemistry and materials science.

The International Space Station has deployed a CubeSat that holds new radio, propulsion and communications technologies, as well as improved power performance and increased storage.

TechEdSat-10, the 10th entry to the Technology Educational Satellite series, features four cameras, nine processors, one graphics processing unit, eight radios and power storage with the capacity for 150 watt-hours, NASA said Tuesday.

The CubeSat is also equipped with exo-brake technology that produces drag to move the satellite away from orbit.

Technology Educational Satellites build on support from students of California Polytechnic State University, the University of Idaho, University of California Riverside and San Jose State University.