ARETE ASSOCIATES — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N151-044

Description

Air Cushion Vehicles (ACVs) conduct day and night, off-shore, near-shore, and on-shore missions. Operational and safety navigation requirements dictate that craft operators maintain situational awareness in littoral environments during all conditions. Operators must be able to see through sea spray, high humidity, haze, smoke, and dust. A complete situational awareness solution that is insensitive to ambient lighting and obscurants is required for a navigational aid. Aret proposes the use of a Dual Active and Passive Sensor (DAPS) combined with real-time fusion to provide the LCAC operator with a navigation display insensitive to low-visibility conditions. Currently, available large format cameras offer a wide area surveillance capability at very fine resolution which can be used for persistent surveillance over large areas of interest. The LIDAR sensor offers a complementary capability by providing high-resolution 3D terrain and obstacle data. This data can be used for a wide variety of ways including terrain mapping, object classification, feature detection and obstacle identification. The EO data will be overlaid onto the 3D LIDAR data to form an immersive, real-color, model of the area of interest.