The US Office of Naval Research (ONR) has awarded a contract to Charles River Analytics to develop compact aerial video exploitation (CAVE) for small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).
Charles River will receive technology support from Singular Computing in the development of an image tracker that uses less than 2% of power and operates almost two times faster when compared to a traditional solution.
Integrated with hardware/software system, the CAVE uses ISR Technology to process high-resolution video data at full video-rate onboard a small UAV.
CAVE will be capable of gathering aerial imagery for military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) even under significant size, weight and power (SWaP) constraints.
Charles River senior scientist Ross Eaton said that small UAVs usually collect poor quality images due to loss of clear vision when mobile and have poor image tracking capability.
CAVE-equipped UAVs can examine the area, locate moving objects and quickly send high-resolution images to the commander of specific regions that may require further assessment, according to Eaton.
"Rather than receiving blurry images too late to be of value, the commander receives crystal clear images of a truck with four men carrying AK47s," Eaton added.
CAVE features Singular’s computing hardware architecture to provide a high level of efficiency over conventional processors.
Additional features of the CAVE includes Charles River’s VisionKit library of vision components to provide the capability for image analysis and classification.
