Consultancy expertise of the Cyber Defence Campus in the field of smartphone innovations
The Cyber Defence (CYD) Campus of armasuisse Science and Technology (S+T) provides partners with its expertise in an advisory capacity. With its technological knowledge, it makes an important contribution to driving forward innovations in the defence sector. The CYD Campus has collaborated with Noser Engineering on the development of an AI platform for object recognition.
Inan Kadioglu, Department of Cybersecurity and Data Science, Competence Centre Science and Technology
The CYD Campus worked with Noser Engineering to develop an AI platform. The platform was tested by the Swiss Armed Forces in a field trial in spring 2024 and investigated the extent to which members of the armed forces can use their smartphones as sensors to supplement the military situation picture. The contribution of the CYD Campus was crucial to the successful recognition and assessment of the data provided by the members of the armed forces.
The CYD Campus actively helps partners of the DDPS, such as the Swiss Armed Forces, to implement AI projects. The knowledge of its employees in the field of AI makes it possible to assess technological potential and develop innovative solutions. Technologies that accelerate the speed of information flows and contribute to information-based decisions are of particular importance to the Swiss Armed Forces. This corresponds to the goal formulated in the Swiss Armed Forces' digitalisation strategy of implementing a digitalised sensor, intelligence, command and control network (SNFW network).
Digitalisation and innovation projects of the Swiss Armed Forces
With its digitalisation goals, the Swiss Armed Forces are pursuing an increase in its level of capability. A central focus is on ensuring the flow of information across all areas of operation and at all levels. In the SNFW network, data is collected by sensors and summarised into information and knowledge. These findings serve as a basis for decisions on the effective deployment of its own resources.
One innovation focus of the Swiss Armed Forces is the testing of crowdsourcing solutions for generating and consolidating information through the participation of members of the armed forces. The potential of smartphones was tested in a field trial. The aim was to understand the extent to which members of the armed forces can voluntarily collect data with their smartphones - used as sensors - and supplement the military situation picture.
Information summarisation and processing through AI
AI technologies played an important role in this field trial. The content collected was used to test the data processing. An AI platform developed by Noser Engineering was used to filter out militarily relevant data. Users of the platform had the opportunity to independently enter text, image and video content. To verify the authenticity of the content, a location in Switzerland was required, which was confirmed by two independent Threema IDs. The focus was on object recognition. The temporal correspondence of the content and the overlap of the object under investigation were also compared.
Contribution of the Cyber Defence Campus
The CYD Campus has key expertise in the operational capabilities of AI models. Its expertise includes the ability to recognise and process AI tools and the connection to the central processing unit (CPU). In the run-up to this field trial, the CYD Campus evaluated various AI models. It also made its Message Receiver Object Detection platform available to Noser Engineering during the development of the AI solution. This platform is used to recognise objects that are sent to the AI platform.
The success of the CYD Campus's contribution was that existing gateway functions on Threema were used to implement the AI platform on it. Thanks to the work of the CYD Campus and the AI platforms developed, the data provided by the members of the army was successfully identified, verified and summarised.
Innovationsvorhaben der Armee: Smartphones von Armeeangehörigen als Sensoren [in German]