Exploiting Advances in Video Analytics to Support Military Operations and Related Applications

Abstract

As the prime contractor for the U.S. Army's Persistent Surveillance and Dissemination System of Systems (PSDS2) program, we have witnessed firsthand the U.S. military's video glut problem. Established in 2005 to address an urgent requirement for a video processing, exploitation, and dissemination (PED) capability, the PSDS2 program has provided the core video dissemination backbone used by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in Iraq and by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, where it is still in active use. PSDS2 integrates realtime sensor data from multiple sensor types-including hundreds of video sensors-and makes it available on-demand simultaneously to thousands of users both in near real time and streamed from forensic archives. Given the large number of stationary and mobile video and other sensors that are being integrated, the criticality of the services provided, and the austerity-in terms of available communications bandwidth, equipment size, weight, power, cost and cooling (SWaP+C2) limitations, and military personnel availability-we are motivated to investigate the use of analytics to address the video glut problem.