ARETE ASSOCIATES — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A17-102
ARETE ASSOCIATES — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Defense.
- Amount
- $154,993
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Army
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Topic
- A17-102
- Solicitation
- 17.1
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- CA
- Period
- 2017-06-12 → 2019-03-18
Description
Infrared search-and-track systems are common for many military applications. The maximum range of passive thermal infrared sensors (MWIR/LWIR) is reduced when targets are small (sub-pixel), low-SNR, or imaged against high-clutter backgrounds. Areté Associates proposes to leverage its demonstrated expertise in real-time, physics-based image processing and statistical faint-target tracking to improve detection and tracking of low-contrast, pixel- and sub-pixel sized targets in multi-frame MWIR imagery. In this Phase-I effort, Areté will develop and demonstrate hardware-optimized pre-processing, image enhancement, and target detection and tracking. The tracker will ultimately be deployed on custom hardware, and operate real-time on 300+ Hz-frame rate MWIR imagery. This will meet the objective of reducing the minimum detection and tracking range for small UAVs and mortars.