Raytheon [RTN] has launched Eagle-300, a wide area, long-range sensor providing a 360-degree view of a specific area, targeting national and homeland security type markets such as border security and critical infrastructure protection.
The new sensor, which was developed in less than a year, provides persistent 360-degree surveillance, providing quicker detection and response times than current sensors that rotate completely but don’t see continuously, Raytheon officials say.
Raytheon will market the Eagle-300 globally, including in the U.S. So far the company has had more interest from potential international customers, a Raytheon spokesman tells TR2. The system has been shown to the U.S. Army.
“The Eagle-300 support Raytheon’s persistent surveillance strategy that emphasizes the ability of collection systems to linger on demand in an area and detect, locate, and track a target,” says Gene Blackwell, vice president of Raytheon’s Rapid Initiatives Group. “It also facilitates predictive techniques that enable forces to stop an attack before it starts. As part of a network operational center, it uses forensic techniques that enable forces to rewind an event, similar to a digital video recorder, and assist in an investigation.”
Eagle-300 can cost a customer between $200,000 and $1 million or more depending on the configuration, Gary Reese, director and senior counselor of Sky Innovations, says at a media briefing introducing the sensor. Sky subsidiary SkyWatch LLC brought the concept for the sensor to Raytheon’s Rapid Initiatives Group, which with Raytheon Vision Systems brought the idea through integration, test and demonstration in eight months. Today the system is being manufactured and is market ready.
From discussions in April 2007, the first concept version was ready in August, then image intensifiers were updated and integrated and in October the system was demonstrated. In November Eagle-300 was integrated into the open architecture of the Network Operation Center in Raytheon’s Arlington, Va., offices. The sensor could also be ported to a wireless handheld device.
The system has been demonstrated out to 10 kilometers. Live demonstrations last month during the media briefing showed a 360-degree panorama from a single Eagle-300 sensing downtown Washington, D.C., mounted on top of the Rosslyn Towers in Arlington, Va. The wide field of view (WFOV) tracked human activity some 3 kilometers away at the Washington Monument and zeroed in on a truck crossing a Potomac River bridge.
A second demonstration saw Eagle-300’s WFOV detect and track a boat coming upriver, which was then further examined with the near field of view cameras.
“The live panorama is constructed from acquired frames of data that are each in themselves acquired at about a one second update rate,” says Steve Botts, technical director of Raytheon Vision Systems.
The sensor as a WFOV that is always monitoring and rapidly updating, and then an independent NFOV used to zoom in once something in the wide view is identified for further investigation, Blackwell says.
Eagle-300 consists of commercial off-the-shelf products and can be used as a stand-alone, or as a node on a network. Sensor data can be fed into its own ground station consisting of PCs and software, or piped into an operations center.
An operator sees the sensor coverage on a map, in this case from Google [GOOG], icons pop up when something is detected, which could be human movement or other activity as designated. Clicking on the icon produces more information and then upon an operator’s decision, coordinates can be delivered to soldiers, police or some other entity for action. Additionally, the PC screen can show snippets of video of the detected activity, which can be stored for later forensic analysis.
The sensor system is four feet long and capsule-shaped, weighing less than 100 pounds. In the upper half of the Eable-300 is a NFOV camera with a high performance zoom capability. The bottom half houses the WFOV camera system. The sensor has four ports and each looks out over 90 degrees and is continually observing. “We step through eight frames to cover that 90-degrees and it takes about a second,” Botts says. “So the refresh time of the entire panorama is about eight seconds.”
Upgrade options include a low-light camera for both the NFOV and WFOV, which could extend the time of operational use. Additionally, infrared cameras could be incorporated. The system can be mounted on a tower, on an airship, on a building or installed on the ground.