Adaptive Computing for Surveillance and Seeker Applications

The Missile Defence Agency (MDA) calls for novel adaptive computing solutions on either analog and/or digital architectures designed for ballistic missile defence (BMD) surveillance and missile seeker applications. It seeks for approaches and methods that may be attractive not only to satellites and interceptors, but also to UAV/UCAV platforms. We are proposing novel algorithmic frameworks for moving platforms (UAV types) relying on a standalone compact vision system built from state of the art commercial-off-the shelf (COTS) and military-off-the shelf (MOTS) components. We are proposing an efficient adaptive algorithmic framework for process real-time applications making an optimal use of the available computing power reaching some specific task related goals. Relying on appropriate strategies spatial resolution/temporal rate can be traded against computational complexity; sensitivity against robustness in an adaptive process. In our algorithmic framework a spatial multi-grid computing is placed within a temporal multi-rate structure and at each spatial grid point the computation is based on an adaptive multi-scale approach. The algorithms assume a reconfigurable analogic hardware architecture consisting of a high resolution optical sensor, a low resolution cellular sensor-processor and a digital signal processor. The proposed framework makes the acquisition of a spatio-temporally consistent image flow possible even in case of extreme variations and ideally supports the handling of various difficult problems on a moving platform including terrain/target identification, navigation parameter estimation and multi-target tracking.