Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA 22203-1714

A -- AIRBORNE VIDEO SURVEILLANCE (AVS) PROGRAM SOL BAA 97-42 DUE 082297 POC Ms. Algeria Tate, Fax (703) 696-2208 WEB: http://www.darpa.mil, http://www.darpa.mil. E-MAIL: BAA97-42@darpa.mil, BAA97-42@darpa.mil. DARPA is planning to solicit proposals for the research, development, integration, demonstration and evaluation of technology for Airborne Video Surveillance (AVS) systems for surveillance imagery exploitation and targeting. DARPA will review these proposals and initiate awards for contracts starting on or about the 2nd Quarter of government Fiscal Year 1998. The exact due dates for full technical and cost proposals, as well as procedures for obtaining a Proposers Information Package (PIP), will be included in a subsequent CBD announcement, which will be released prior to an informational briefing to industry. The primary subject of this announcement is an informational briefing to industry covering this Program. The briefing will cover AVS program goals as well as past or ongoing government efforts which have developed technology relevant to AVS goals and objectives. The industry briefing will be held on 28 August 1997 from 0900 to approximately 1530 at the Holiday Inn, 4610 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA, Phone: (703) 243-9800. A limited block of hotel rooms have been set aside at the Holiday Inn under the reference DARPA AVS Program. Additional accommodations may be available at the following hotels: (a) In the Ballston area, within walking distance of the Holiday Inn: Comfort Inn (703) 247-3399; Arlington Hilton (703) 528-6000; (b) in the Rosslyn area of Arlington, VA, a 10 minute Metrorail ride from the Ballston area: Holiday Inn Rosslyn Western Park (703) 527-4814, Hyatt (703) 525-1234, Best Western Key Bridge (703) 522-0400, Marriott Key Bridge (703) 524-6400. Requests for reservations must be made by 1500 EDT on 22 August 1997 via electronic mail message to <avs_ program@darpa.mil&;gt; or by fax to AVS Program at 703 696-2201. The request must include the following: name of attendee(s), title, organization, department or company division, phone, fax, and electronic mail address. If requested attendance exceeds capacity, organizations will be notified to limit the number of participants. General Goals of This Program: Unmanned aerial vehicle technology has produced a number of video (defined for AVS as any electro-optical (EO) or infrared (IR) sensor operating at greater than 1 Hz) reconnaissance and surveillance vehicles currently in operational use. These have the capability to collect and provide video imagery directly to ground exploitation systems and command posts. Motion video data is proving to be quite powerful in these deployments for a number of reasons, many related to the use of temporally varying motion imagery as opposed to still frame imagery. However, in early deployed prototype systems, video exploitation is completely manual and the geolocation of targets is inaccurate. The challenges of manual teleoperation, operator/analyst fatigue, and inaccurate geolocation have been noted within the UAV video user community. DARPA s Airborne Video Surveillance (AVS) program is to explore, develop and evaluate ways of accurately geo-referencing video information and converting AVS systems from remotely controlled surveillance sources returning video streams to semi-autonomous active surveillance systems performing designated tasks. The AVS program will develop and demonstrate technology for real-time geo-registration, multiple target surveillance, and automated activity monitoring from the electro-optical (EO) and infrared (IR) imagery available from current (e.g., Predator, Hunter) and future (e.g., Global Hawk, Dark Star, Outrider) unmanned aerial vehicle systems. The AVS program will include roles for technology research and development sources, a systems integrator, and an airborne testbed integrator and operator. Greater detail will be supplied in the PIP. The following brief descriptions are supplied to allow potential participants to select appropriate attendees for the Industry Briefing. Research and development is needed to develop, evaluate, document and deliver technology subsystems for integration into demonstrations and mission evaluations. Four possible technology areas have been identified: Precision Video Registration (PVR), Multiple Target Surveillance (MTS), Activity Monitoring (AM) and Other Advanced Video Surveillance (Other). PVR is defined as the fast registration of video imagery to accurately geo-referenced imagery or maps in order to allow the precision (in the range of 2-10 meter error) geo-location of targets in the video imagery. PVR should develop this accurate geo-location technology for both single video frames, sequences of video frames that contain moving targets, and large area coverage, ortho-rectified image mosaics created from overlapping video frames. MTS is defined as technology to allow airborne gimbal-mounted, actively controlled, video sensors in visible and infrared bands to simultaneously track multiple moving ground vehicles or targets (up to twelve) in a UAV system s field of regard. AM will develop technology to allow airborne the AVS sensors to continuously monitor delineated areas (military sites, areas, and lines of communication) within the UAVs field of regard to detect specific human and vehicle activities and alert the AVS operator about them. In the Other category, DARPA is interested in any proposed technology that will improve video surveillance technology and surveillance mission efficiency. Offerors will be challenged to explicitly define the benefits of, and goals for, such technology development. The AVS Program will develop concepts of operation, designs, plans and schedules for annual demonstrations and mission evaluations of increasingly capable AVS integrated systems. The Program will develop a standard AVS architecture to guide system design and integration. The Program will design, develop, test and document an AVS Core Air Ground System (CAGS) that will provide common software functions necessary to all technology areas. A representative list of functional areas is: sensor control, gimbal control, image sequence acquisition, airborne image sequence processing, air-to-ground communications, airborne systems executive control, ground image sequence processing, ground station executive control, and human computer interfaces for the AVS ground control station. The Program will integrate and test technology subsystems and conduct annual demonstrations, mission evaluations and field exercises, using a manned or unmanned airborne video testbed system. SPONSOR: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington VA 22203-1714 (0227)

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