Intelligent Systems at APL
The Intelligent Systems Center (ISC) leverages APL’s broad expertise across national security, space exploration and health to fundamentally advance the employment of intelligent systems for our nation’s critical challenges.
What the ISC does
The Intelligent Systems Center (ISC) acts as a focal point for research and development in artificial intelligence, robotics and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Intelligent systems can make decisions under uncertainty – some of our intelligent systems can fly, walk, swim and roll and others ingest vast, complex datasets to make useful predictions. APL creates and translates advancements in human and machine intelligence into new capabilities for our sponsors.
As a center of excellence at APL, the ISC fosters new partnerships internally and externally to the Lab, hosts key projects and technologies for the enterprise, and acts as the steward of the Lab’s artificial intelligence strategy. Based on envisioned futures spanning national security, space exploration and health, APL has formulated an AI Technology Roadmap consisting of the four technology vectors illustrated below to help guide our research and development in the coming decades.
Learn more about APL’s AI Technology Roadmap
Technology vectors

Autonomous Perception
Systems that reason about their environment, focus on the mission-critical aspects of a scene, understand the intent of humans and other machines and learn through targeted exploration

Superhuman Decision-Making and Autonomous Action
Systems that blend human and artificial intelligence to identify, evaluate, select, and execute effective courses of action with superhuman speed and accuracy for real-world challenges

Human-Machine Teaming at the Speed of Thought
Systems that can be trusted to understand human intent while collaborating to perform tasks that are difficult, dangerous or impossible for humans to carry out with speed and accuracy

Safe and Assured Operation
Systems that are robust to the perturbations of real-world environments, resilient to adversarial attacks, capable of ethical reasoning and guaranteed to pursue goals that remain aligned with human intent