VIGILANTE: an advanced sensing/processing testbed for ATR applications

VIGILANTE consists of two major components: (1) the viewing image/gimballed instrumentation laboratory (VIGIL) -- advanced infrared, visible, and ultraviolet sensors with appropriate optics and camera electronics; (2) the analog neural three- dimensional processing experiment (ANTE) -- a massively parallel, neural network-based, high-speed processor. The powerful combination of VIGIL and ANTE will provide real-time target recognition/tracking capability suitable for ballistic missile defense organization (BMDO) applications as well as a host of other civil and military uses. In this paper, we describe VIGILANTE and its application to typical automatic target recognition (ATR) applications (e.g., aircraft/missile detection, classification, and tracking), this includes a discussion of the VIGILANTE architecture with its unusual blend of experimental 3D electronic circuitry, custom design and commercial parallel processing components, as well as VIGILANTE's ability to handle a wide variety of algorithms which make extensive use of convolutions and neural networks. Our paper also presents examples and numerical results.

[1]  W S McCulloch,et al.  A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity , 1990, The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence.

[2]  Deborah A. Levin,et al.  Ultraviolet emissions quantified by rocket payloads , 1993, Optics & Photonics.

[3]  Eric R. Fossum,et al.  Active pixel sensors: are CCDs dinosaurs? , 1993, Electronic Imaging.

[4]  T. Duong,et al.  64x64 Analog Input Array for 3-Dimensional Neural Network Processor , 1997 .

[5]  B. D. Guilmain,et al.  The MSX Mission Objectives , 1996 .

[6]  John S. Carson,et al.  Low power analog neurosynapse chips for a 3-D "sugarcube" neuroprocessor , 1994, Proceedings of 1994 IEEE International Conference on Neural Networks (ICNN'94).

[7]  B V Kumar,et al.  Tutorial survey of composite filter designs for optical correlators. , 1992, Applied optics.

[8]  Belur V. Dasarathy,et al.  Decision fusion , 1994 .

[9]  Curtis Padgett,et al.  Detection and orientation classifier for the VIGILANTE image processing system , 1997, Defense, Security, and Sensing.

[10]  G. Cottrell,et al.  Categorical Perception in Facial Emotion Classification , 1996 .

[11]  M. Turk,et al.  Eigenfaces for Recognition , 1991, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[12]  Michael D. Miles,et al.  MAVIS: A special purpose neural computational system for ATR , 1995, Neural Networks.

[13]  Bir Bhanu,et al.  Automatic Target Recognition: State of the Art Survey , 1986, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems.

[14]  Michael E. Hoenk,et al.  Delta-doped CCDs as stable, high-sensitivity, high-resolution UV imaging arrays , 1994, Defense, Security, and Sensing.

[15]  John K. Liu,et al.  Long-wavelength 256 x 256 QWIP handheld camera , 1996, Defense + Commercial Sensing.

[16]  Taher Daud,et al.  Analog 3-D Neuroprocessor for Fast Frame Focal Plane Image Processing , 1995, Simul..