Autonomous Flying With Neuromorphic Sensing.

Autonomous flight for large aircraft appears to be within our reach. However, launching autonomous systems for everyday missions still requires an immense interdisciplinary research effort supported by pointed policies and funding. We believe that concerted endeavors in the fields of neuroscience, mathematics, sensor physics, robotics, and computer science are needed to address remaining crucial scientific challenges.

Experimental and numerical study of underwater beam propagation in a Rayleigh-Bénard turbulence tank.

The propagation of a laser beam through Rayleigh-Bénard (RB) turbulence is investigated experimentally and by way of numerical simulation. For the experimental part, a focused laser beam transversed a 5  m×0.5  m×0.

Video rate nine-band multispectral short-wave infrared sensor.

Short-wave infrared (SWIR) imaging sensors are increasingly being used in surveillance and reconnaissance systems due to the reduced scatter in haze and the spectral response of materials over this wavelength range. Typically SWIR images have been provided either as full motion video from framing panchromatic systems or as spectral data cubes from line-scanning hyperspectral or multispectral systems. Here, we describe and characterize a system that bridges this divide, providing nine-band spectral images at 30 Hz.

Enhancement of imagery of objects with highly dynamic brightness and large rotational motion.

We report on application of multi-frame super-resolution (SR) to sampling limited imagery that models space objects (SOs). The difficulties of multi-frame image processing of SOs include abrupt illumination changes and complex in scene SO motion. These conditions adversely affect the accuracy of motion estimation necessary for resolution enhancement.

Spectral anomaly detection in deep shadows.

Although several hyperspectral anomaly detection algorithms have proven useful when illumination conditions provide for enough light, many of these same detection algorithms fail to perform well when shadows are also present. To date, no general approach to the problem has been demonstrated. In this paper, a novel hyperspectral anomaly detection algorithm that adapts the dimensionality of the spectral detection subspace to multiple illumination levels is described.