TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Ground/Sea Vehicles, Human Systems

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PM-Light Armored Vehicle, PM Stryker, PM Cougar, PM Motor Transportation.

The technology within this topic is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services. Offerors must disclose any proposed use of foreign nationals, their country of origin, and what tasks each would accomplish in the statement of work in accordance with section 3.5.b.(7) of the solicitation.

OBJECTIVE: To develop display technology suitable for use in combat vehicles and other restricted spaces to provide full 360 degree imagery and situation awareness and provide immediate threat identification and localization.

DESCRIPTION: Combat vehicles are subjected to a variety of threats from all directions, and the required response times can be short. Moreover, newer armored vehicles, such as the LAV, provide severely restricted or no direct view of the exterior for many of the occupants. 360 degree imaging can be created by sensor technology. Omnidirectional imagery can be provided by catadioptric optics, multiple cameras, or scanning cameras. Unfortunately the sensor data may not be easily presented with useful spatial relationships on a flat screen. Where is the target I see on the flat screen? Is it behind me or to my left? Hazards, potential threats, targeting information, characterization of object or terrain and escape routes and the relative position of enemy and friendly assets need to be presented in an intuitively easy to understand display that maintains spatial relationships and maximizes the ability of the brain to exploit situational awareness cues from the imagery. The human visual system has powerful innate capabilities. For example human abilities for detection of changes, movement, motion parallax, stereo depth perception, data fusion, or the detection of salience based on features like color, could be exploited by display techniques. The best methods to present sensor technology to the vehicle commander in a moving vehicle will be able to interpret the data as if he was directly looking at the world with his eyes, ears. Various software tools that have been developed such as object tracking, data fusion and change detection for example also can benefit from a 360 degree volumetric display. Non-imaging sensors also need to be displayed, For example, in a vehicle with acoustic gunfire detection and source localization, the predicted location of the shooter needs to be overlaid on imagery or other spatial representations. Hence, the approach should be extensible to fusion of information from other imaging or non-imaging sensors.

360 degree panoramic views could potentially be expressed on a number of different types of displays, including flat screen, curved screen, flexible displays, goggles, 3d and holographic displays or distortion corrected projection onto display surfaces of arbitrary shape. Development of new sensor technologies is not the focus of this topic.

Each of these technologies have physical and mental limitations. Space claims in a vehicle are limited due to egress, safety and available volume. Motion sickness due to terrain irregularities and speed variations, changing lighting conditions, pixel movement incongruence with vestibular cues and fields of view are concerns that need to be minimized. Soldiers may not tolerate devices that block direct views. Combat vehicle information should be readily accessible and easily customized according to the needs of the mission.

PHASE I: Conduct a design study to determine the best means for presentation of very wide and omnidirectional sensor information, especially video (visible, low light and/or IR) to soldiers within a vehicle, identify the display technologies and necessary software for transformation of the sensor information and generation of the display. Develop a system design from sensors to display. The displays should depict threats in relationship to the current vehicle position in a 360 degree three vector space, enable visual identification for accurate characterization of the kind of threat, and make provision for possible fusion of multi sensors with proper scaling in order to analyze a current situation and formulate an immediate response. The response for example can be the aiming of a weapon at the perceived threat.

PHASE II: A low cost and practical display technique is to be developed that considers the physical limitations of the interior of a combat vehicle, presents 3D or other panoramic computer generated graphics and interactive targeting information, can present a fusion of multiple sensor information in three space and can integrate 360 degree panoramic information to a vehicle commander so that he can quickly identify and respond to a change in his status. Build and evaluate a prototype system from sensor to display.

PHASE III: Develop ruggedized prototypes for test and evaluation of the display technology in combat vehicles. This would include field evaluations with structured user feedback to guide refinements of the design. Work with a Marine Corps or Army vehicle program manager on defining acceptable performance metrics and configuration.

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: There is strong commercial potential for this technology in improving highway and loading safety, in the trucking industry, buses and any large vehicle that requires good rear visibility, railroads, boating and commercial vessels.

REFERENCES:
1. S. Nayar, "Catadioptric Omnidirectional Cameras," Proc. IEEE Conf. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 482-488, June 1997.

2. T.E. Boult, "Personal panoramic perception," <http://www.vast.uccs.edu/%7Etboult/PAPERS/CISST99-Personal-panoramic-perception--Boult.pdf> in Proc. Int. Conf. on Imaging Science, Systems and Technology, pp. 383-390, World Sci. Eng. Soc., July 1999.

3. Sun, X., Kimber, D., Foote, J., Manjunath, B., Detecting path intersections in panoramic video," IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo 2002, August 26, 2002.

4. Tzavidas, S.; Katsaggelos, A.K.. "A multicamera setup for generating stereo panoramic video." IEEE Transactions on Multimedia Volume 7,Issue 5, Oct. 2005 Page(s):880 – 890.

KEYWORDS: Display; Situation Awareness; EO/IR Imagery;Combat Vehicles; Omnidirectional

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

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