ARETE ASSOCIATES — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N192-064

Description

Navy and Marine Corps Small Tactical Unmanned Air Systems (PMA-263) can improve real-time situational awareness by using airborne EO/IR imagery to generate broad area mosaic maps of the ocean surface. This organic situation awareness capability will directly support time-critical Navy missions including anti-submarine and countermine warfare. This remote sensing can be accomplished by implementing real-time integrated hardware and software onboard unmanned airborne systems (UAS).Areté Associates proposes to develop ROMAI: Real-time Ocean Mosaics from Airborne Imagery. The Navy will benefit directly from our experience developing and transitioning other UAS ocean imaging capabilities. Our proposed approach includes the following benefits:•     A low risk approach that builds on existing real-time airborne ocean imaging systems.•     Algorithm demonstration and validation using a large database of existing airborne ocean images•     A flexible and adaptive solution that can be adapted to different UAS platforms to meet the Navy present and future needsPhase I will be a feasibility study the will provide example ocean mosaics from extensive database of existing ocean imagery and design of UAS integrated hardware and software system. The success of Phase I will lead to prototyping and demonstration of a real-time ocean mosaics on UAS.