Airborne Contact Cueing for Panoramic Imagers

Arete will build an algorithm capable of real-time performance on panoramic video that rapidly detects low visibility aircraft with minimal false alarms. The team will make use of the on-hand periscope video and APB-13 algorithms to create panoramic inputs to our robust, likelihood-based Bayesian Field Detector (BFD) algorithm. For the Phase I effort, we will integrate and advance the BFD algorithm to detect aircraft and provide cueing information to the operator including an aircraft state vector and detection statistics. Within the scope of this overall solution, Phase I activities will focus on assessing algorithm performance and feasibility of a real time implementation. The Arete team is uniquely qualified to offer the requested capability. Its advanced position is a result of extensive experience in periscope image processing, 360-degree periscope mosaic-imaging, coherent stacking for low SNR detection, precise false alarm mitigation, and efficient highly-parallel algorithm development. The team also benefits from having over 20 hours of real periscope videoincluding airborne contacts in visible and infrared bandson hand for algorithm development and testing.