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Automated Sensor Operator (ASO) enhances gimbals with automated tactical search, detection, and reporting capabilities
20 February, 2024: Hood River, Oregon
After nearly a decade of developing software-forward multispectral Smart Sensors, Overwatch Imaging has launched a first-of-its-kind solution dedicated to enhancing full motion video gimbals with automated search, detection, and analysis capabilities.
Overwatch Automated Sensor Operator (ASO) software lives at the edge, is rapidly deployable, and delivers tactical, real-time capabilities to otherwise manually-dependent full motion video gimbals. ASO leverages the same proven software architecture as Overwatch Imaging’s suite of smart sensors to automate gimbal control and data collection, analysis, and reporting.
“In a dynamic and overburdened operational environment, the ability to automate the manual, repetitive, and focus-intensive tasks inherent to many intelligence and search missions is an invaluable and immediate tactical force-multiplier,” said Greg Davis, Overwatch Imaging founder and CEO. “We’ve invested heavily in the growth and innovation of our AI-based software capabilities, and have worked in parallel to isolate those solutions from our hardware so they can be deployed on systems beyond our own. ASO represents an exciting evolution in our mission to deliver critical intelligence faster through automation.”
Overwatch ASO automates three distinct areas of sensor operation: Search, Analysis and Reporting. The software controls the physical movement of the sensor, converting it from a manually operated video gimbal into an image-based system that adjusts dynamically to collect data optimized for analysis by AI-driven detection algorithms. Data from the sensor is analyzed in real-time with models and detection algorithms tailored for different mission sets. Intelligence outputs, displayed on an interactive graphical user interface for operators and decision makers to review, are automatically extracted from the full data stream and synthesized into lightweight data products, which can be transmitted rapidly in network-constrained environments.
Search
Analysis
Reporting
“The rising demand for sensors and the intelligence they produce is rapidly outpacing the bandwidth and availability of skilled sensor operators and imagery analysts,” Davis commented. “Enhancing existing hardware and human capability with artificial intelligence and automation, in particular for repetitive and visually-intensive roles, will contribute to increased mission success by scaling up intelligence availability and accuracy, and by helping crews focus on broader situational awareness and impactful decision making.”
Overwatch ASO is compatible with a growing number of leading full motion video (FMV) electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) sensor payloads, including gimbal lines from L3Harris WESCAM and Trakka Systems. Capabilities are growing and evolving over time and currently include maritime search and object detection, infrastructure security and monitoring, mapping and wildfire intelligence, and more.
“One exciting benefit of bringing a software solution into this space is that the capabilities continue to evolve over time,” Davis said. “As we continue to grow and expand our technology, we’re adding new search cues to automatically focus on the highest-value areas, additional detectors for new objects of interest, new computer vision solutions that automatically extract the important parts of scenes, and automatic reporting capabilities so we can share the information we’re discovering in ways that integrate cleanly into other third-party systems. We’re also learning to exploit more data faster so we can work with bigger sensors in more complex environments and mission sets.”
Overwatch Imaging is dedicated to supporting missions that matter by empowering decision-makers with time-critical intelligence as efficiently as possible.
Founded in 2016 in Hood River, Oregon, Overwatch Imaging is a venture-backed small business with customers serving a wide variety of important missions around the world, from fire, flood, and emergency response to counter narcotics, border security, tactical intelligence, and maritime ISR.
Overwatch Imaging develops sensor-agnostic software and purpose-built smart sensors that leverage the latest in artificial intelligence, computer vison, edge computing and sensor-band combination to automate the collection, analysis, and delivery of time-critical geospatial intelligence. The company has a strong track record of cross-platform compatibility, with its native line of smart sensors integrated on 24+ different crewed and uncrewed aircraft types and its ASO software compatible with a growing number of common sensor types.
Media contact:
Adam Lapierre