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perocity
12-22-2010, 06:01 PM
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No more will soldiers’ vision be limited to the socket-embedded spheres that God intended. The Pentagon now wants troops to see dangers lurking behind them in real time, and be able to tell if an object a kilometer away is a walking stick or an AK-47.

In a solicitation released today, Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out research branch, unveiled the Soldier Centric Imaging via Computational Cameras effort, or SCENICC. Imagine a suite of cameras that digitally capture a kilometer-wide, 360-degree sphere, representing the image in 3-D (!) onto a wearable eyepiece.

You’d be able to literally see all around you, including behind yourself, and zooming in at will, creating a “stereoscopic/binocular system, simultaneously providing 10x zoom to both eyes.” And you would do this all hands-free, apparently by barking out or pre-programming a command (the solicitation leaves it up to a designer’s imagination) to adjust focus.

Then comes the Terminator-vision. Darpa wants the eyepiece to include “high-resolution computer-enhanced imagery as well as task-specific non-image data products such as mission data overlays, threat warnings/alerts, targeting assistance, etc.” Target identified: Sarah Connor… The “Full Sphere Awareness” tool will provide soldiers with “muzzle flash detection,” “projectile tracking” and “object recognition/labeling,” basically pointing key information out to them.

And an “integrated weapon sighting” function locks your gun on your target when acquired. That’s far beyond an app mounted on your rifle that keeps track of where your friendlies and enemies are.

The imaging wouldn’t just be limited to what any individual soldier sees. SCENICC envisions a “networked optical sensing capability” that fuses images taken from nodes worn by “collections of soldiers and/or unmanned vehicles.” The Warrior-Alpha drone overhead? Its full-motion video and still images would be sent into your eyepiece.

It also has to be ridiculously lightweight, weighing less than 700 grams for the entire system — including a battery powerful enough to “exceed 24 hours [usage] under normal conditions.” That’s about a pound and a half, maximum. The Army’s experimental ensemble of wearable gadgets weighs about eight pounds. And it is to SCENICC what your Roomba is to the T-1000.

Here’s how far advanced SCENICC is compared to bleeding-edge imaging and networking capabilities that the Army is currently developing. Right now, the Army’s asking three different companies — Raytheon, Rockwell Collins and General Dynamics — to build a wearable platform of digital maps, computers and radios, networked with one another. Soldiers would have warzone maps beamed onto helmet-mounted eyepieces.

The system, known as Nett Warrior, needs to weigh less than eight pounds, and it builds on a years-long and ultimately fruitless effort called Land Warrior. (One of the problems with Land Warrior is it was heavy and cumbersome, owing in part to battery weight.) The Army hopes to choose one of the Nett Warrior designs by March.

By the time it’ll actually roll out Nett Warrior after testing, production and deployment — a few years, optimistically — SCENICC will already be hard at work on its replacement. Darpa wants a hands-free zooming function within two years of work on the contract. By year three, the computer-enhanced vision tool needs to be ready. Year four is for 360-degree vision. Then it’s on to development.

The Army is generally hot for combat-ready smartphones to keep soldiers linked up with each other. And the buzz-generating tool for the soldier of the near future is mapping technology, delivered onto a smartphone or some other handheld mobile device, at least judging from this year’s Association of the U.S. Army confab.

But all of these representation tools are two-dimensional, and require soldiers to look away from their patrols in order to use them. Textron’s SoldierEyes Common Operating Picture, for instance, lets soldiers see icons on a tablet-mounted map telling them where their friends, enemies and neutrals are. It can’t put those icons onto a 3-D picture sent to a soldier’s eyes, let alone allow a 10x zoom for a kilo-wide 360-degree field of vision. Why would anyone use a map on a smartphone when they could have SCENICC?

Even with all the advances in digital imaging, it’ll be a tall order to put together 360-degree vision and 10x zoom and mapping software and integration with weapons systems and lightweight miniaturization and network connectivity.

Darpa doesn’t really address how the system’s networked optics would work in low-bandwidth areas like, say, eastern Afghanistan (though maybe drone-borne cell towers can help).

Indeed, judging from the solicitation, while SCENICC is supposed to be networked, it doesn’t seem to have any communications requirements for soldiers to talk through what their optics are sharing with each other. Maybe there’s a role for those new soldier smartphones after all.

Schneids
12-23-2010, 02:35 AM
Sounds very confusing, but pretty god damn cool. Definitely upping Land Warrior. I just don't think I'd wanna be out on patrols with this. I didn't see anything about having good depth perception as well when wearing this thing. I guess I can't really say much about it until I actually (with the .00001% chance I have) get to try it. Sounds like it'd be alright for convoys though. It sounds like that shit from Metal Gear Solid 4 that that one squad used.

I think i'd go crosseyed trying to look at all the screens or focus on just one of them. To be honest, I'd rather just stick with my eyes and a headset. Maybe only fire team leaders should get it if anything.

SgtJim
12-23-2010, 06:49 AM
very interest thinggy.... :)

i've got the original DARPA announcement.....
let's see this deeper:

Broad Agency Announcement
Soldier Centric Imaging via Computational Cameras (SCENICC)
Defense Sciences Office (DSO)
DARPA-BAA-11-26
DECEMBER 22, 2010---

Concise description of the funding opportunity – The Soldier Centric Imaging via Computational Cameras (SCENICC) Broad Agency Announcement seeks proposals that fully exploit the computational imaging paradigm and associated emerging technologies to yield ultra-low size, weight, and power (SWaP) persistent/multi-functional soldier-scale Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems that greatly enhance warfighter awareness, capability, security, and survivability---

the three components technical datas:

1., HFZ - Hands-Free Zoom


Hands-Free Zoom (HFZ) component
Technical Requirements

Total systems weight < 50 g

Perceived brightness > 50% in normal vision mode and > 25% in 10x zoom mode relative to normal daytime vision (assuming 3.5mm human eye pupil diameter)

Switching time < 100ms between modes

120° FOV in each eye (reduces to 12° in zoom mode)

MTF degradation not to exceed 10% in normal vision mode and 20% in zoom mode

Battery life must exceed one week under normal use
Functional Capability

On-demand hands-free 10x all-optical binocular zoom

Capability delivered at the end of year 22., CEV - Computer-Enhanced Vision



Computer-Enhanced Vision (CEV) component
Technical Requirements

Total system weight < 250 g

Battery life must exceed 24 hours

Computational camera metrics

> 90% of Shannon number-limited performance

≤ 0.2 mrad resolution (e.g., > 3.5 mm entrance pupil diameter at a wavelength of 587 nm)

> 75% diffraction-limited MTF at all spatial frequencies

Full field of view of 120°

HUD metrics

Immersive display providing foveal resolution over full 120° FOV

Instantaneous FOV of > 13° with latency < 15 ms

< 20% loss of natural light
Functional Capability

Real-time fusion of natural and measured VIS/NIR imagery

Real-time fusion of natural imagery and measured polarimetric data

Programmable 1x-50x digital zoom.

Automated brightness adjustment providing tolerance to 100x overall brightness level change

Spatially adaptive contrast enhancement providing 10x local relative brightness adjustment

Integrated weapon sighting providing real-time reticule overlay

Capability delivered at the end of year 3


3., FSA - Full Sphere Awereness


Full Sphere Awareness (FSA) component
Technical Requirements

Total system weight < 400 g

FSA camera metrics

0.01 mrad resolution over 4π steradian FOV

FPA metrics

Extension into longer wave IR spectral bands

FPA frame rates ≥ 1 kHz

Automatic and user controlled data display

Definition of task-specific metrics
Functional Capability

ATDM

Muzzle flash detection and localization

Extraction of 3D scene information

Projectile tracking

Object recognition/labeling

Map and mission data overlays

MPCI

Non-line-of-sight imaging

Collaborative multi-camera scene reconstruction

Queryable integrated data representation

Soldier-specific software agents

Capability delivered at the end of year 4


if somebody needed, i can send the full file in pdf format...

Stark
12-23-2010, 07:58 AM
This is all well and good if things continue the way they are as in if the US has the financial capability to support this - but remember there might come a time when these things just cost too much, its the same with that
new grenade rifle - each round costs like 20k - its ridicules just so you can kill one guy behind a fucking wall.

shatto
03-13-2011, 05:11 PM
Remember Ronald Reagan.
The result of the never implemented (insert political comment here) SDI , that the democrats belittled by naming 'Star Wars' served to cause the Soviets to have to come up with a countermeasure, something that led to their economic collapse and the fall of the Soviet Union .
The military-junk landscape is littered with similar equipment; B-58 Hustler, Comanche helicopter, lotsa guns and boom-stuff, etc. How much was created to force an enemy to spend resources to defend against something we had no intention of using? Because politics and deception enter the picture we will never know.
I remember the pundits and experts questioning some airplane, then under development, saying that; yes it could shoot down the entire soviet air force, which was good because we could afford only one. Today, we don't fly anything as cheap as that plane was expensive.