PRESS RELEASE
July 21, 2010
CONTACT PERSON:
Paul Fileger
p 314-222-4640
f 314-222-4650
|
|
|
|
|
Flight Test Underway – CET’s HyperSAR Program
A team of CET™ engineers is deployed to the Army Test and Evaluation Center (ATEC) and the Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) for flight testing as part of the Company’s HyperSAR Program. Contracted and managed by the Army I2WD at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey and the BCBL at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, the program is demonstrating orthogonal operation and fusion of hyperspectral imaging (HSI) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for airborne, multi-mission intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) applications.
As part of the program, CET™ is testing its Gen II airborne hyperspectral system which includes the sensor and the processing, exploitation and dissemination (PED) system, embedded with CETs patent pending algorithm. Flight testing is underway where both sensors are imaging ground targets of interest from various altitudes and slant ranges. ”One of the goals of the test is to demonstrate that a greater variety of targets can be detected, recognized and identified using the combined capabilities of both sensors”, says Dr. Chris Kocher, HyperSAR Program Manager for CET™.
The Gen II airborne hyperspectral sensor incorporates a proprietary high efficiency optical filter technology for producing hyperspectral images from the visible into the short wave infra-red. The small, compact system is packaged in a gimbal to stabilize imagery and to provide pointing capability. The system control, processing, and storage unit is contained in a rugged environmental chassis with 3 Terabytes of internal hard drive storage capacity.
The system is a dramatic improvement over the Gen I system previously flown at APG. The new system is much smaller and lighter and has lower power requirements, making it suitable for possible use on mid-sized and larger UAVs such as Shadow and Sky Warrior. The optical system has been improved to provide clearer imagery at a faster rate, and a single chassis computer has replaced the two large rack mounted computers used in the Gen I proof-of-concept system. State of the art Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) processors are utilized for the high-speed processing needed for near real time processing. The operator station is a single rugged laptop connected by Ethernet to the central processing system.
The Gen II airborne sensor is one of a number of hyperspectral imaging systems CET™ is developing for airborne, ground, force protection, and dismounted hand-held applications.
Photos Courtesy of Frank G. Bocianowski