TAU - Self Defence Urgent Firing (SEDUF)

The Asymetric surface threat

Nowadays warships operate more and more often in coastal waters, in narrow straights or in restricting manoeuvring areas, where they are faced to non traditional modes of operation conducted by small fast crafts or agile and high speed vehicles (such as dinghies, or “jet-skis”) capable of pronouncing terrorist actions, whose primary role is to seriously damage “Navy combatant vessels”.

The usual engagement capabilities of warships are usually not suited to these situations, due the suddenness of the attack, the very short reaction time left to the defender in order to detect, classify and engage successfully the aggressor.

The different analyses undertaken by the naval staffs on the matter have highlighted the need to extend the reflex and remote control engagement capabilities of “combatant vessels”.

DCNS have appealed to the SOFRESUD Company and subcontracted to her a feasibility study aimed at exploring the subject with a new angle of view; the concept of “Self-Defence Urgent Firing” (SEDUF).

The "SEDUF" concept

The concept is based on:

• The absolute priority given to a drastic reduction of the reaction time between the first detection of a suspect naval object and a destruction firing decision, with the intervention of a single human operator in the firing loop, thus in the close proximity of the “combatant vessel” (less than 1500 meters),
• The essential role given to portable “visual aiming devices” able to control safely and accurately a high rate and small calibre gun.

System definition

The system derived from the stated concept is composed of 3 majors units operated by a “single human operator” from the target visual detection to the firing:

• A portable “Sighting Unit” fitted with fibber-optic gyrometers, used to determine the target angular coordinates (absolute or relative bearing and elevation). The “Sighting Unit” rests, when not operated, on a “Calibration Unit” which houses the system computing resources,
• An “Interface Unit” performing fire control computations, and ensuring the physical interface with the small calibre gun,
• A “Display & Control Unit” used by the operator to fire the gun.

The system feasibility study has demonstrated, through the numerous scenarios run, that the firing can be conducted successfully against small targets such as “a jet-ski”, without use of a range finder, thanks to the innovative approach used to elaborate the target range. This main conclusion makes the system particularly interesting from a design and cost point of view.

System efficiency

The assessment of the applicability of the concept has been made through:

• An accurate modeling of the different “functional elements” of the system complying with the concept; this system being composed of the QPD (Quick Pointing Device) produced by SOFRESUD, in a configuration of “aiming and firing device” controlling the “NARWHAL” weapon developed by GIAT Industries,
• A detailed evaluation of the system efficiency against the different threats specified (fishing boat, small and fast surface craft, jet-ski).

The results of the implemented simulation have demonstrated the excellent efficiency of the system against small targets at interception ranges in the vicinity of 500 meters and shorter distances. A probability of hit about 0.90 can be expected on the last segment of route of the attacking vehicle, with bursts of 15 rounds.

The next phase planned is the system behavior analysis, in the context of a physical connection between the system major components (QPD and NARWHAL).

GYROVIZ - 3D automatic and robust real-time modeling using located frames

GYROVIZ proposes to address the challenge of automatic modeling of 3D physical scenes from located frames.

The central motivation of our project stems from the observation of the current limitations of image-based modeling systems, which require a substantial amount of user interaction for matching the images. This limitation becomes even critical when dealing with massive datasets to match.

While a considerable amount of efforts has previously been put at solving this issue purely from the algorithmic point of view, we propose to address it primarily from the technological side.

Our solution hinges on a set of inertial sensors (fiber optic gyroscopes and accelerometers) which once coupled with an image acquisition device, provide a very accurate measure of its physical location and pose.

Both robustness and efficiency of the image matching problem are this way substantially improved, as the solution space of the matching problem is drastically reduced, and the matching is always provided with good initial guesses.

Outline of the located frame acquisition

The algorithmic aspect of our proposal relies on state-of-the-art computer vision and geometric computing techniques for extracting and matching characteristic points and features from images, and for reconstructing 3D models with color attributes. Real-time reconstruction as well as feature and symmetry-preserving reconstruction are listed as two topics for PhD thesis.

The complete system will be fully mobile and portable, markerless, and may open many opportunities for modeling complex scenes. Two demonstrators will be developed in the framework of the project:

• A 3D camera tracking system for virtual studio and postproduction purposes
• A 3D modeling system for multimedia or engineering applications.

SCANMARIS - Automatic Detection of Abnormal Vessel Behaviours

The ScanMaris project is a software workshop designed to develop and evaluate solutions for thread prevention and maritime border monitoring. It relies on enriched tactical picture exploitation tools resulting from the continuous treatment of important volumes of heterogeneous data gathered in real time and differed time. ScanMaris will enable the supervision of the permanent evolving traffic on a global maritime zone in order to follow the flow of transported goods (bulk, containers, energy, chemical….) according to various routes (corridor, coastal traffic…) and to automatically detect criminal traffic of illicit products.

ScanMaris will use data treatment tools to merge ship’s kinematic data and other information to establish and maintain a global enriched tactical picture compilation of the traffic, the training methods and the models which exploit the tactical picture. This produces a permanent knowledge of goods flows, improves its follow-up and the rules of investigation organised to detect irregularities like illicit products flows, disasters, regulation violations, etc.

The ScanMaris project will involve functions that improve the effectiveness of a global surveillance of the contraveners. They will contribute to set up optimal answers and intervention means adequately fitting the struggle against illicit activities and maritime violations.

The ScanMaris system will be structured in three data processing layers. Each of them elaborates added value traffic pictures for the detection of abnormal behaviour:

• Data acquisition network (sensors over wide maritime area)
• Traffic picture
• Enriched traffic picture (sensor data combined with auxiliary information coming from on line databases (TRAFFIC 200, LLOYDS, EQUASIS, etc.)
• Detection of abnormal behaviour (Learning Engine built on the Adaptive Multi Agent System theory and a Rule Engine)