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Human-Animal Discrimination Capability for Unattended Ground Sensors

Award Information
Agency: Department of Homeland Security
Branch: N/A
Contract: N10PC20008
Agency Tracking Number: 0921050
Amount: $100,000.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: N/A
Solicitation Number: N/A
Timeline
Solicitation Year: N/A
Award Year: 2009
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): N/A
Award End Date (Contract End Date): N/A
Small Business Information
6800 Cortona Drive
Goleta, CA 93117
United States
DUNS: N/A
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 John Berger
 (805) 968-6787
 jberger@toyon.com
Business Contact
 Marcella Lindbery
Phone: (805) 968-6787
Email: mlindbery@toyon.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

Handling false alarms produced by animals is a special problem for unattended ground sensors (UGS) because of the number of ways
that animal signatures can mimic those of humans. Specifically, animal footsteps are impulsive, much like humans; the contact of a foot
or hoof on the ground produces a sudden noise that rapidly fades away. Seismic, acoustic, and passive infrared (PIR) sensors are often
plagued by false alarms and this often results in the distrust of such systems. Toyon Research Corporation proposes to develop a signal processing framework to eliminate false alarms produced by animals and allow for the detection of humans. Toyon's approach consists of target detection and feature extraction modules that are specific to each sensor modality, namely seismic, acoustic, and PIR. Next, automatic target recognition (ATR) algorithms will be applied on select features to conduct preliminary discrimination for
each modality. Finally, a fusion algorithm will combine the ATR discriminations from each of the three modalities and output the consensus, high-confidence target declarations. Toyon's efficient processing structure allows for a low-power, real-time solution that will be agnostic to UGS hardware systems. Toyon's approach can easily be integrated with existing DHS and DoD platforms.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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