Integration of 360-Retrodirective Noise Correlating Radar with Panoramic Imager

This proposal aims to develop and demonstrate a novel fused sensor system capable of detecting bullets in real time and over a 360o field-of-view. The bullet detection is based on a retrodirective noise-correlating radar that also provides the bullet bearing in real time. The bearing information will be transformed into a track through space with real-time external processing in a PC or PDA. The second component of the fused sensor will be a panoramic visible imaging system using commercially available catadioptric optics and digital-camera technology. The imager will periodically (~ 1 frame/sec) take a high-resolution picture of the local environment, and transfer it via USB 2.0 to the user PC or PDA in response to a cue that the radar has detected a bullet. The visible image will then be collected by the PC just after the radar data, so that the latter can be overlaid on the former in real time. The Phase-II goal is to realize the entire data fusing in under one second. To facilitate such fast processing, it will be done entirely in a Linux environment on a laptop PC.