The BAT instrument tells the Swift satellite where to point to make immediate follow-up observations of GRBs. The science software on board must efficiently process gamma-ray events coming in at up to 34 kHz, identify rate increases that could be due to GRBs while disregarding those from known sources, and produce images to accurately and rapidly locate new Gamma-ray sources.
Comment: 4 pages, no figures, to appear in Santa Fe proceedings "Gamma-Ray Bursts: 30 Years of Discovery", Fenimore and Galassi (eds), AIP, 2004