TOYON RESEARCH CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: In an effort to improve the current approach for periscope surveillance detection, the Nav

Description

In an effort to improve the current approach for periscope surveillance detection, the Navy is developing a new panoramic mast video sensor. Utilizing both LWIR and EO technology the sensor will provide a 24 hour operational capability in challenging maritime environments. Advancements address operational necessity for rotating the mast and viewing limitations, however, they do not address additional difficulties operators face in reliably detecting aircraft in large quantities of video data. Ability to reliably detect aircraft targets in EO/IR video would leverage the technology to its full potential and increase the effectiveness of human operators. Relevant algorithms should be both computationally efficient and robust under a full range of operating conditions, including cloud clutter, water droplet clutter, day and night, and weather-driven illumination and temperature variations. Toyon Research corporation proposes a suite of parallelizable algorithms based on statistical appearance and apparent change modeling combined with track-before-detect framework that enables detection of aircraft at the farthest possible standoff distance (fewest pixels on target) allowing operators maximum time for target evaluation and response.