In a deal that strengthens its product portfolio and gives it a presence in Australia, Shield AI on Thursday said it has agreed to acquire Melbourne-based Sentient Vision Systems, which provides a low-cost artificial intelligence-enabled sensor that can detect land and maritime targets over vast areas compared to traditional electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) products.
Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in four to six weeks pending regulatory approvals in Australia, were not disclosed. Sentient has about 50 employees.
Sentient’s passive ViDAR wide area motion imagery solution is used by Australia’s navy and maritime safety authority, the U.S. Coast Guard on its Boeing [BA]-supplied ScanEagle unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), Mexico’s navy, Northrop Grumman [NOC], AeroVironment [AVAV], and other customers.
The acquisition complements Shield AI’s autonomous pilot technology, called Hivemind, that is based on AI, and its MQ-35 VBAT UAS, which takes off and lands vertically but flies like a fixed-wing aircraft. Last August, the two companies partnered to integrate Sentient’s next-generation ViDAR, Sentient Observer, on VBAT and with Hivemind (Defense Daily, Oct. 23, 2023).
At that time, the companies said their integrated solution will meet the needs of the second pillar of the tri-lateral AUKUS partnership formed by Australia, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. Pillar 2 is focused on the development and sharing of technology such as AI and autonomy, hypersonic and counter-hypersonic, cyber, quantum, and others.
VBAT is expected to begin flying with Sentient Observer in mid-2024, Brandon Tseng, Shield AI’s co-founder and president, told Defense Daily on Wednesday ahead of the announcement.
The partnership, and pending acquisition, also aligns well with the Pentagon’s Replicator Initiative, which at the start plans to spend $1 billion over the next 12 to 18 months to acquire and field thousands of relatively low-cost all-domain, attritable autonomous systems to aid in a potential future conflict in the Indo-Pacific theater.
“The combination of AI pilots, Sentient Observer, and teams of affordable drones like the MQ-35 VBAT will provide the same land and maritime domain awareness that today’s $40 million and $180 million Group 5 drones and crewed aircraft like the P-8 provide at a fraction of the price,” Tseng said in a statement. “The DoD has asked for an all-seeing eye over tens of thousands of square miles, 24/7, without the need for GPS or communications links. For Shield AI, Sentient Observer is the final piece of the puzzle.”
Sentient’s ViDAR is proven up to sea state 6 and enables searches of large areas in a relatively short period.
In the interview, Tseng said the partnership was first formed to solve his company’s “North Star problem,” which he described as “how do we find, fix, and put targets of interest at risk over very large geographies, 30,000 to 50,000 square nautical miles, 24 hours a day, seven days a week” in contested and communications-denied environments “without a remote pilot and tie it back into long-range kill chains.”
Affordable aircraft like the group 3 VBAT combined with Hivemind and Sentient Observer solves this problem, he said. VBAT, which has a range of about 500 nautical miles and a cruise speed of about 55 knots, currently can search 300 nautical miles per hour with a traditional EO/IR gimbaled sensor and with Sentient Observer will be able to scan 2,000 nautical miles per hour, he said.
Tseng said the acquisition came together through the partnership and similar cultures between the companies. Post acquisition, he said that Sentient will continue to supply its ViDAR solution to existing customers and hopefully add more.
Like with Hivemind, which Shield AI is working to integrate with different aircraft, the same goes with Sentient Observer because “we don’t want to prohibit value being delivered to the warfighter.”
The deal also establishes a new subsidiary in Australia, Shield AI Australia.
“Australia thinks about indigenous capabilities and so when we think about how do you go to market in Australia, for certain things that we are doing around AI, it helps to have a wholly owned subsidiary in the in the country on the continent,” Tseng said.
He also highlighted the Royal Australian Air Force’s work on the Loyal Wingman program that integrates AI and autonomy on Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat unmanned aircraft for collaborative operations with manned aircraft. There are opportunities to bring Hivemind to hardware platforms in Australia, he said.