Brainstorming sessions

ASSETs+ has held structured brainstorming sessions dedicated to foreseeing the future oriented time-framed relations of technologies & applications, job activities and education & training activities, with technical experts from the Defence Industry, many of them belonging to the companies of the ASSETs+ Consortium.

The domains within the scope of ASSETs+ are C4ISTAR, Cybersecurity, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems. The analysis of these domains is complex, given that these are strongly entangled. To overcome this entanglement, and to have a theoretical sounding but also actionable framework, we propose an updated version of C4ISTAR, a so-called 4.0 version: C4AID. This is an acronym that stands for “Command, Control, Communication, Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, in Defence”. This framework is for us the natural evolution of C4ISTAR, given that it contains all of the elements that the previous framework was containing. This novel framework will be used to look at the ASSETs+ technologies and applications a holistic and future-oriented way. It has the form of a matrix containing the relevant technologies for ASSETs+ project, and the relevant defence areas. The framework is reported in the figure below:

The C4AID framework presents:

• on the rows, the technological fields under analysis in ASSETs+: Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Systems, and Cybersecurity.
• on the columns, the main areas of the Defence sector: factory, land, air, sea, space, and the cyber-space.
• on the intersections, the applications of a technology related to a given domain a specific Defence sector.

SESSION 1: ‘The impact of the technologies of the domains Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Autonomous systems in the Sea Defence Area’

This brainstorming session generated 48 different ideas.

SESSION 2: ‘The impact of Cybersecurity in Defence areas (Air, Naval, Space, Sea, Cyberspace and Factory)’

This brainstorming session generated 59 different ideas:

SESSION 3: ‘The impact of Artificial Intelligence in Defence areas (Air, Naval, Space, Sea, Cyberspace and Factory)’

This brainstorming session generated 35 different ideas:

The experts’ ideas are compared with the technologies and applications identified in the data-driven analysis. The blending process is based on a contrast and comparison all collected information, to enable the interpretation of the knowledge behind the data.

The maps below present:

• On the horizontal axis, the timeline, it describes the maturity level of the technologies
• On the vertical axis, the Defence-related applications
• In the plot, the technologies.

The position of each technology is given by their level of maturity and their relevance within a given defence related application. That information, enriched with the valuable comments collected during the brainstorming sessions, allowed the ASSETs+ team to cluster the technologies and provide the full picture of the current technological domains in such a complex panorama, as the Defence domain.