IDCAST Partners With Industry for Third Frontier Effort

  • Published
  • By Beverley Thompson
  • Sensors
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  Thanks to $906,000 in support to be supplied by the State of Ohio's Third Frontier Commission over a 2-year period, a collaborative effort to develop sensor technology enabling continuous, near-real-time video monitoring of city-sized areas for urban law enforcement and security applications is now under way. The funding went to Persistent Surveillance Systems through the Ohio Third Frontier Sensors Program. PSS--in partnership with the AFRL/University of Dayton consortium known as IDCAST, the Institute for the Commercialization of Advanced Sensor Technology--received the award based on Third Frontier's acceptance of the Xenia, Ohio-based company's proposed "Colorization and Resolution Enhancement of Airborne Wide-Area Persistent Surveillance Sensors for Law Enforcement Operations" project.

The wide-area, airborne surveillance sensor technology slated for development will involve an upgrade of PSS' existing monochrome, 88-megapixel (i.e., 88-million-pixel) airborne data collection system to a color, 192-megapixel, multicamera array comprising twelve, 16-megapixel cameras. Adding color to the collected imagery will enhance an object's features for easier tracking and identification.