Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Full Motion Video (FMV) Enhancement

Topic Objective Develop a capability to help the MQ-1C Gray Eagle (a medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft system) Payload Operators improve situational awareness (SA) and increase intelligence gathering efficiency to ultimately reduce workload. The desired capability would provide additional geography features, map overlays, known targets identifications, and user generated markings on the Full Motion Video (FMV) received at the unmanned aircraft system's Ground Control Station. This capability will be used to facilitate intelligence capture, Pattern-of-Life notifications, or to become part of a user-generated Database that provides information to operators that are surveilling an area. Description MQ-1C Gray Eagle is an important Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) platform for the United States Army. The capture of intelligence products is labor intensive for the MQ-1C Gray Eagle Payload Operator. During the typical ISR mission, the Gray Eagle Payload Operator is often task saturated while also conducting radio communication with ground units. A seamless capability that would allow for quick tagging of Points of Interest, overlay of key geographical features (roads, buildings of interest), and integration of targeting / Field of View algorithms would reduce the amount of workload required of the operator. Other desired capabilities are quick intelligence capture by automatic creation of a quad chart that would detail graphical details, technical details (how many, how much, Pattern-of-Life), and other relevant details. Useful information quickly accessible on the FMV would be an overlay road names, past events of military interest, high granularity coordinates, enemy or friendly locations, and past observation reports. This capability when complete will support added resiliency for Army and Multi-Domain Battle (MDB) mission threads in a contested environment. Once complete, this capability could be scaled for use in other Army systems. Phase I Determine the feasibility of adding real-time or near real-time information overlays to the FMV stream that is displayed to the Gray Eagle Payload Operators inside the Ground Control Station. The feasibility study should address the key components and technologies required to implement this capability. The proposed system should be modeled to benchmark the processing performance required to support the application and include an analysis of the latency. Phase II In Phase II, a prototype of the system will be developed and demonstrated in a laboratory environment. MQ-1C Gray Eagle has a Golden Full Motion Video set from a flight test from a CONUS test facility. The software application would process this mission representative Full Motion Video feed to demonstrate the capability to add information to the FMV to enhance the Operator's SA and reduce workload. The demonstration will provide an understanding of relevant data and help develop soldier requirements to provide a relevant capability once integrated into the MQ-1C Gray Eagle. As a potential follow-on, Product Manager Endurance Unmanned Aircraft Systems (MQ-1C Gray Eagle) has a lab environment that would allow for quick integration and assessment of the software application. Phase III In Phase III, the Army desires to pursue a fully-qualified capability for integration and testing in the MQ-1C Gray Eagle System. Training Materiel will be required to attach this application to the MQ-1C Gray Eagle software product line. In addition, the Army requires Defense Information System Agency (DISA) Certification to install the software application on military computing systems. It is also envisioned that the FMV enhancement could be paired with the pre-existing Vision Based Navigation (VBN) onboard the UAV to provide a synergistic effect. Product Manager Endurance Unmanned Aircraft Systems (MQ-1C Gray Eagle) has a Vision Based Navigation (VBN) flight test program underway that could potentially facilitate this assessment. In the commercial sector, the FMV enhancement could be useful for the law enforcement and homeland security domains, or in any application where there is a need for increased situational awareness. Submission Information To submit full proposal packages, and for more information, visit the DSIP Portal.