Physical Optics Corporation — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: NGA201-006
Physical Optics Corporation — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Defense.
Phase I SBIR feasibility signal
- Phase I awards fund proof-of-concept work. For capture teams, they mark early interest from Department of Defense in a technical approach.
- Watch for Phase II follow-ons from the same firm/topic family — that conversion path is where budgets and transition pressure rise.
- Obligated amount $99,997. Cross-check similar awards in the same agency and technology tags for going-rate context.
- Topic code NGA201-006 links this award to a solicitation family — search the same topic stem for incumbents and recompete timing.
- Amount
- $99,997
- Agency
- Department of Defense · National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Topic
- NGA201-006
- Solicitation
- 00.1
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- CA
- Period
- 2020-10-05 → 2021-07-04
Description
To address the NGA’s need to fully automate recovery of camera orientation parameters from ground-level imagery, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop new Automated Camera Orientation Recovery Software (ACORS). It is based on a new, multicue combination of algorithms for finding true horizon lines in images. Specifically, the innovation in locating occluded true horizon lines below visible skylines enables ACORS to perform fully automated extraction of camera pitch and roll angles and their uncertainties from individual images or video frames in which the skylines are already labeled. ACORS will also optionally annotate this imagery with the horizon lines it found and their error bounds. As a result, ACORS offers fully automated and accelerated recovery of camera orientations from batches of ground-based imagery, which directly addresses the NGA’s requirements. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate the feasibility of ACORS by identifying, implementing, optimizing, and evaluating a suitable combination of algorithms, reaching technology readiness level (TRL)-3. In Phase II, POC plans to develop a TRL-6 ACORS prototype supporting complete automation and rigorous error tracking. We will also assemble diverse training and testing datasets and develop performance metrics for varying operating conditions and sensor types, taking into account possible confounding factors.