Persistent Hyperspectral Tracking and Fusion

Recent employment of persistent surveillance systems by the Department of Defense has provided a significant force multiplier to both combat and asymmetric threat operations. Furthermore, the use of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) is proving effective as semi-autonomous ISR platforms. These systems require automated exploitation capabilities such as multi-target detection, track, and ID. These capabilities generate a significant challenge when attempting to track hundreds of moving ground targets while maintaining “chain of custody” for high valued targets. The fusion of various sensor modes such as EO, IR, radar, and hyperspectral imagers can assist in mitigating these challenges through a combination of wide area coverage kinematic target information aided with high fidelity features. Specific solutions that exploit this fusion are the use of multiple hypothesis tracking (MHT) coupled with target features or classification to resolve the data association problem. Numerica will leverage prior experience with employing our tracking technology on operational systems to formulate a complete system solution for real-time implementation in Phase II and III. BENEFIT: Under the proposed Phase II program, Numerica would develop and build a system that is capable of live hardware demonstration of our tracking algorithms with unmanned systems. The project will focus on these components through a combination of innovative algorithm development and effective hardware engineering. Our ongoing relationship with Lockheed Martin and Boeing on SBIR efforts related to unmanned systems will provide an avenue for commercialization. It is anticipated that the algorithms developed and results obtained by Numerica under both Phase I and Phase II of this SBIR will be incorporated by in their continued enhancements of defense systems. Direct support of this goal is being provided by Lockheed Martin through their offer to provide Numerica with access, free of charge, to the Lockheed Martin MS2 Technology Collaboration Centers. Numerica and Boeing are teamed with Ball Aerospace to support the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) for the exploitation and development of technology that utilizes hyperspectral data.