A University of Western Australia team has won the 2010 Eureka Prize for Outstanding Science in support of Defence or National Security sponsored by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO).
Robert Clark, Australia’s Chief Defence Scientist, presented the $10,000 prize to the research team from the university’s School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering during an awards ceremony.
“The innovative work of Professor [Ba-Ngu] Vo and his team could have many benefits in the defense domain,” Clark said. “This includes an improved identification capability at longer ranges, including in hazardous urban environments and for the protection of ships, aircraft and vehicles.”
Clark praised professors Vo, Ba-Tuong Vo and Antonio Cantoni for developing an innovative approach to tracking algorithms that significantly increase the capacity to handle multiple objects of interest, using less demanding computing power than traditional tracking methods.
“It has the potential to contribute significantly to Australia’s defence and national security, by making more tractable the challenges of detecting the large numbers of objects that modern sensors may typically detect,” Clark said.
The existing approach to tracking suffers from the problem of exponential complexity, which can rapidly exhaust the capacity of even powerful computers to handle. In contrast, the new approach offers the ability to handle thousands of objects using only off-the-shelf computers.