CREARE LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: A15-006

Description

High-fidelity representation of terrain morphology is a critical requirement for accurate modeling and simulation of infrared background scenes. The current state of the art in terrain representation for missile seeker systems and other military applications is based on digital elevation models, which are relatively coarse in resolution and have smooth contours that do not resolve the presence of discrete surface transitions and undulations. Consequently, the resulting scene simulations fail to capture the effects of medium-scale, non-horizontal terrain features such as ditches, gulches, washes, and road shoulders. To address this need, Creare is developing a high-fidelity terrain signature modeling framework. This framework accounts for the presence of medium-scale, non-horizontal terrain features in infrared background scene simulations, through physics-based modeling of thermal effects and radiative emissions. During Phase I, we demonstrated the feasibility of our approach through high-fidelity morphological reconstruction of representative terrain scenes containing medium-scale, non-horizontal features. During Phase II, we will develop computationally efficient, multi-dimensional heat transport model solutions for these non-horizontal terrain features, and demonstrate integration with existing background scene simulation and rendering toolsets.