Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

UAV developers test Feature Recognition Software

Recognition software originally developed for the gaming industry, to automatically spot problem gamblers when they enter venues is now being tested for use in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The software has been dubbed DIVOT (Digital Imagery and Video Object Tracking).

'Intrigued by the possible applications to UAV surveillance video, the UAVB conducted a test last year at Eglin using streaming video from a Pointer UAV. A captain's face was entered into the computer as a search item, and the UAV was launched.

"It starts beeping on this clump of trees," Cook said. "And they had to drive the UAV about another two miles before they could get close enough [to see] there was a vehicle underneath the trees."

The captain whose face had been loaded into the computer was sitting in his truck eating lunch. "It found his face through the trees, through the windscreen, in the shadows of the trees, and we went, 'Wow, we need to explore this,'" Cook said.'

This type of software will have a myriad of applications in military operations, surveillance, border patrol, search and rescue just to name a few.

Check out this other example of it's power:

'Dubbed DIVOT (Digital Imagery and Video Object Tracking), the software later was put to work on pre-recorded video taken by a Predator UAV in Iraq. The system was provided with imagery of certain objects, then told to identify them in another video.

"The scene is a flat desert with some black clumps on it," Cook said. "And when the Predator is about 10 miles away, it starts beeping on one of the clumps. And it takes probably five minutes for the Predator to fly close enough where you can finally make out with the human eye that it's even [an object], let alone the one that we told it to find."' - Source - Aerospace Daily

Posted by Darren at April 17, 2004 04:18 PM | More from UAV News |