The DoD has become increasingly reliant on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) applications. With the advent of expanded ISR capabilities, there is a pressing need to dramatically expand the real-time processing of wide-area, high-resolution video imagery, especially for target recognition and tracking a large number of objects. Not only is the volume of sensor data increasing exponentially, there is also a dramatic increase in the complexity of analysis, reflected in the number of operations per pixel per second. These expanding processing requirements for ISR missions, as well as other DoD sensor applications, are quickly outpacing the capabilities of existing and projected computing platforms.
Traditional aerial spycraft systems, whether on drones or spy planes or helicopters, operate a bit like telescopes. They’re really good at staring at one individual target in very high fidelity. What this new technology proposes is precisely the opposite. The idea is to watch everything at once, to view the full picture, ‘Eyes in the Sky’ author Arthur Holland Michel. When you do that, you gain all sorts of new powers. You can watch multiple different targets simultaneously. You can see the relationships between targets, to see if they’re part of the same adversary group. You can even see what happened when you weren’t paying attention..
Wide-area motion imagery (WAMI) sensor payloads and processing solutions provide real-time activity-based intelligence in both tactical and strategic environments. They help analysts observe vehicle tracks and traffic, study patterns of life, identify normal behavior and nodes of activity, and track trends to anticipate next behaviors.
WAMI is also useful to law enforcement agencies, to track organized crime, follows suspects in shootings, even down to [looking for] illegal dumping.
DARPA’s developed advanced drone surveillance system ARGUS-IS (Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System), through a 30 month, $18.5 million contract awarded to BAE . The mission of the Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance – Imaging System (ARGUS-IS) program is to provide users a flexible and responsive capability to find, track and monitor events and activities of interest on a continuous basis in areas of interest. The system used 368 cell phone camera sensors, 5 megapixels each which are focused on ground through four telescopic lenses. Together, these cameras makeup to a resolution of a staggering 1.8 gigapixel allows observation of targets as small as 6 inch— good enough to resolve humans, animals, and even birds from an altitude of 6000 metres.
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