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Hedgehog Loop

Built at National Security Hackathon (by Army xTech) · May 2, 2026 · San Francisco, CA

Hedgehog Loop — Demo video

The perception model of a UAV that crushed tank detection yesterday fails the moment the adversary tries to camouflage it: cope cages, camo netting, hedgehog welding. We are using these systems today. Every minute they don't work is a burden on us. Collecting training data from the real world takes weeks or months. The war is evolving faster than that, by then, there will be new modifications. Whose problem is this? The drone operator at the tactical edge, a soldier with a backpack, a controller, and minutes to decide. They have first-hand knowledge of what changed on the battlefield and why it's confusing the autonomy. Today they have no way to push that knowledge back into training without a multi-week data pipeline. The loop we want: the operator sends a note and a few screenshots from the flight controller, and the model is updated overnight.

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