SPECIAL FEATURE Box-Level Systems in UAV Payload Designs
Effective Video Handling on Unmanned Vehicles With UAV sensors bringing in massive amounts of video data, the existing data communications bandwidth is hard pressed to keep pace. But with effective processing of the video data, a lot of constraints can be overcome. Tim Klassen, Video Technology Lead Consultant GE Intelligent Platforms
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here are many significant challenges in handling video in an unmanned vehicle environment, and these are exacerbated by the deployment of increasing numbers of sensors and the growing demand for the highest levels of image quality. Given the unique constraints of many unmanned vehicle environments, what are the key parameters—and what are the ideal characteristics of a solution? In recent years, the proliferation of unmanned vehicle platforms—in the air, on the ground and in the water— has provided an unparalleled opportunity to expand intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to unprecedented levels. This has resulted in an explosion of information being generated and potentially available to decision makers and command/control centers. Humans have a fantastic ability to process and filter visual information and make quick decisions about a course of action. This has made video sensors one of the most sought after sources of information in unmanned vehicles.
Communications Bottleneck One of the greatest hindrances to effective use of the available visual data 20
COTS Journal | October 2012
Figure 1
A typical situational awareness scenario. is the limited communication bandwidth to transmit that data from remote unmanned vehicles to locations where the information can be used as actionable intelligence. Aggravating the situation is the variability that can arise in available communication bandwidth as the vehicles move into different re-
gions that may use different types of communication links such as terrestrial RF, line-of-sight and satellite transmission, or which have differences in bandwidth availability due to network sharing. Unfortunately, the increase in video sensor installations has not been matched by an equivalent increase in