Defence has invested $10 million to help ten Australian companies develop AI and virtual reality technologies to boost training and enhance signal detection capabilities.

The companies include counter-drone specialist DroneShield, simulated medical training company Real Response and South-Australian business Simbiant, which specialises in modelling, simulation and electronic warfare.

The new Defence Innovation Hub contracts are funded under the federal government’s $32 million COVID economic stimulus package.

Defence Industry Minister Melissa Price says the contracts will help develop exciting and new AI technologies.

“Overall, these technologies have the potential to improve how our military train and operate,” she said in a statement.

Radio frequency detection

The biggest contract, worth $2.2 million, went to Simbiant, which is developing an AI-based radio frequency generation, detection, characterisation and classification system.

Fellow South Australian company Lumination has been awarded $1.9 million contract to develop an immersive platform that uses virtual reality to provide realistic training experiences.

DroneShield received a $945,000 contract for a phase 2 prototyping project to develop a software system capable of detecting and relaying unknown signals from multiple feeds directly to an operator in a virtual reality environment.

The project will leverage AI-enabled computer vision search and sensor fusion technologies to generate target data for future use.

CEO Oleg Vornik said the fuding will push the envelope of what’s possible with AI for the company’s military and government work.

“The project enables deeper collaboration with Australian defence to leapfrog our AI capabilities in the computer-vision, sensor-fusion and command and control domains,” he said in a statement to the ASX.

Droneshield  is currently delivering a $3.8 million Electronic Warfare project as part of its collaboration with the Australian military and the Defence Innovation Hub grant opened a new sovereign industrial capability front, Mr Vornik said.

Victorian company Real Response was awarded a $669,000 contract to develop a realistic medical training simulator using AI which can adjust the difficulty of medial scenarios by measuring stress in trainees.

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