Software Engineering Institute

Accurate and reliable information gathering can save money, missions, and lives in a wide range of mission-critical scenarios: from search and rescue to active reconnaissance and ambush extraction. Recent advances in the commercialization of remote video, acoustic, motion, infrared (IR), and electromagnetic sensors offer the opportunity to improve information gathering, dissemination, and contextual reasoning of small squads in hostile, challenging environments at low costs. Due to these reduced costs and the robustness of existing platforms, we expect such remote sensors to become ubiquitous in future combat and disaster environments. However, deploying such sensors manually during important missions can be difficult, hazardous, and error-prone. Additionally, the sensors by themselves provide raw data that may be difficult for human operators to properly utilize without automated aids to help determine what information is useful to the mission context.