Near-Vehicle Situational Awareness and Omnidirectional Weapons Detection System

This Phase II proposal addresses the Ground/Sea Vehicles, Sensors Technology Area and entails the development of a suite of video (visual) and radar sensors for detecting and declaring the presence of near vehicle threats including IEDs. Opportunistic hostile attacks present a constant threat to US troops. An effective omni-directional, situational awareness system would aid in force protection and would have an immediate benefit to US forces. Costly existing ground weapons detection and near-vehicle situational awareness technologies are limited in terms of sensor field of view, range, size, affordability and reliable target detection and location, especially while platforms are in motion. Our novel combination of video and radar sensors, offers a performance region of 30-200 meters for both situational awareness and detection of random lethal attacks. When deployed on a small robot such as TALON or PackBot, this sensor suite capability provides the soldier user with an effective warning system to permit the avoidance and the destruction of IED threats.