Dynamic Data Driven Applications Systems (DDDAS) modeling for automatic target recognition

Abstract

The Dynamic Data Driven Applications System (DDDAS) concept uses applications modeling, mathematical algorithms, and measurement systems to work with dynamic systems. A dynamic systems such as Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) is subject to sensor, target, and the environment variations over space and time. We use the DDDAS concept to develop an ATR methodology for multiscale-multimodal analysis that seeks to integrated sensing, processing, and exploitation. In the analysis, we use computer vision techniques to explore the capabilities and analogies that DDDAS has with information fusion. The key attribute of coordination is the use of sensor management as a data driven techniques to improve performance. In addition, DDDAS supports the need for modeling from which uncertainty and variations are used within the dynamic models for advanced performance. As an example, we use a Wide-Area Motion Imagery (WAMI) application to draw parallels and contrasts between ATR and DDDAS systems that warrants an integrated perspective. This elementary work is aimed at triggering a sequence of deeper insightful research towards exploiting sparsely sampled piecewise dense WAMI measurements – an application where the challenges of big-data with regards to mathematical fusion relationships and high-performance computations remain significant and will persist. Dynamic data-driven adaptive computations are required to effectively handle the challenges with exponentially increasing data volume for advanced information fusion systems solutions such as simultaneous target tracking and ATR.