OFFICE OF NAVAL RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS TO NEURAL NETWORKS AND SIGNAL-PROCESSING IN OCEANIC ENGINEERING

Research supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) has produced many of the key neural network and signal processing tools being applied to real world engineering problems today. The Navy is vitally interested in applications of neural nets. This is reflected by the fact that six different Navy laboratories, numerous universities, and many commercial companies are currently pursuing naval applications of neural networks as diverse as acoustic signal detection, active acoustic signal detection and classification, real-time, on-line machinery fault detection and analysis, image processing and identification, intelligent control for autonomous underwater vehicles, and automatic target recognition. This paper summarizes many of the highlights and accomplishments of ONR's neural network basic research programs and shares a bit of the historical perspective that serves as a source of pride in the world of Navy science and technology-the long term support and resulting payoff of Navy sponsored research in the broad field of neural networks. In addition, we will survey the significant challenges that must be overcome before neural network applications will become widely available to the Navy community.