Toronto, February 2005: AUG Signals won a new contract under the Space Technologies Development Program – 2004 promoted by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The project will develop a comprehensive software toolbox for Automatic Registration of Temporal Hyperspectral and Polarimetric SAR images. This contract builds on advanced results obtained by the company in the automatic image registration area for the last two decades. Currently, AUG Signals has a successful commercial product for automatic multi sensor image registration that works under the company’s Electro-optical Remote Sensing Software (ERSS) in an IDL environment and is one of the key players in a U.S. Department of Defense multi-sensor image registration activity.
Work performed under previous projects funded by the National Research Council Canada, the Canadian Space Agency and Defence Research & Development Canada (DRDC) – Valcartier and Ottawa will be refined and incorporated in a unique toolbox with superior performance (sub-pixel accuracy, increased resolution and multiple choices in selecting the optimal registration tool for a given set of data). The implementation of the algorithms on the web, via the company’s interactive knowledge portal at www.signalfusion.com will also be investigated to create an active marketing vehicle for the Internet-enabled geo-processing user segment.
In association with the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing and Consultants TGIS, AUG Signals will enerate the 3-D models of the registered images. The project benefits from the support of Defence Research and Development – Ottawa and the University of Calgary to produce up-to-date, advanced software for various detection and classification tasks. Noranda/Falconbridge will contribute in the validation phase of the resulting automatic registration toolbox. Several military and commercial (e.g. natural resource management) applications will be investigated in an initial phase. The current development will be applicable to change detection distributed processing technologies developed by the company under a GeoInnovations activity and currently expanded to international projects.
A commercial product accompanied by user documentation and complete customer support will be delivered at the end of a 15-month development cycle. It is anticipated that AUG Signals’ toolbox will significantly enhance the applicability of RADARSAT-2 data and of hyperspectral imagery acquired during current and planned missions.
For more information, please contact Dr. Ting Liu.
Toronto, January 2006: Hyperspectral mineral exploration offers significant advantages for the mining industry. AUG Signals’ HE/LP software revolutionizes the use of remote sensing for mineral exploration.
Toronto, December 2005: AUG Signals will develop optimal polarimetric Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) detectors using simulated RADARSAT-2 data. The team intends to combine recent advances in ship detection from the Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing and Defence Research and Development Canada-Ottawa using polarimetric data with AUG Signals’ innovations in the areas of CFAR detection, statistical target and clutter description and fusion of CFAR detection technologies. The project targets several applications including ship surveillance, coastal mapping and pollution control. Some of the main target markets in Canada are Port Authorities, Maritime command centres and the emergency response centres.
Toronto, May 2005: The Department of National Defence, through the Defence Industrial Research Program, awarded a contract to AUG Signals for the development of a deployable web-based multi-sensor Automatic Target Detection (ATD) / Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) system for real-time maritime surveillance.
AUG Signals, a leading signal processing company specialized in algorithm development and distributed processing systems for military and commercial applications, will expand its web-based system prototype to employ information from multiple sensors for the surveillance of Canadian maritime regions. This system will use the capabilities of AUG Signals’ online Image Fusion Centre (www.signalfusion.com) for Maritime Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR). The advanced technologies provided by AUG Signals’ image processing portal offer a consistent collaborative framework for assembling the Recognized Maritime Picture (RMP) and aim to support continuous monitoring of designated regions of interest. The surveillance results will be archived in interoperable and secure databases for efficient data mining to satisfy the end user’s specific detection and recognition tasks (e.g. target detection/recognition and traffic monitoring). The proposed network centric approach addresses wide security perspectives to increase Common Situation Awareness.
Spin-off projects encompass the advancement of this signal processing distributed system for the Canadian Military and the development of new capabilities for future commercialization of this product so that it can be also used by the Canadian Military allies. Part of the planned effort will be to engineer a Common Distributed Virtual Database and Information Extraction at multiple levels of security to allow the military operators access to processed information. Real-time information fusion in a peer-to-peer network architecture will facilitate exchange of data in real-time as it gets collected from various sources.
The system will be further adapted to perform specific maritime homeland security activities (e.g., support Port Authorities activities and prevent human smuggling, terrorist and drug trafficking operations).
Dr. George Lampropoulos – One of Ottawa’s 50 Most Important People
Ottawa, March 2005: AUG Signals Ltd. is pleased to announce that Dr. George A. Lampropoulos, President and CEO, has been selected as one of the “Top 50 People in the Capital” in 2005 by the Ottawa Life Magazine.
Toronto, August 2004: AUG Signals is pleased to announce that the company was selected by the Earth Sciences Sector (ESS) of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), in a competitive bid, as the prime contractor to perform a large hyperspectral survey in the southern region of Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. The first phase of the program was initiated in July 2004.
AUG Signals, in association with Geotechnical Business Solutions (GBS) and with the support of the University of Alberta, and in consultation with the Geological Survey of Canada (part of ESS) will combine a diverse set of complementary resources in a powerful hyperspectral team. The contractual activities will benefit from AUG Signals’ extensive expertise in developing state-of-the-art proprietary hyperspectral techniques and successful webbased distributed processing systems and GBS’ proven experience in geological/mineralogical applications to be used for survey design and implementation. An end-to-end solution for geological mapping assisted by hyperspectral processing will be provided for improving the rate of discovery of mineral resources in the Arctic region.
This contract extends work performed under previous projects funded by the Canadian Space Agency Earth Observation Application Development Program (EOADP) and the GeoInnovations program of GeoConnections, a national partnership initiative led by Natural Resources Canada to build the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure. In addition, this contract will make use of advanced signal processing tools of AUG Signals that have been developed over the years under several Department of Defence projects sponsored by Defence Research & Development Canada (DRDC) Valcartier and Ottawa.
Toronto, September 2003: An Innovation Acceleration Centre (IAC) contract has been awarded to AUG Signals to increase the capabilities and applicability of the Image Fusion Centre available at www.signalfusion.com.The scope of this IAC project is to facilitate a multi-node Web-based distributed processing system for remote sensing applications through a new processing node built at Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS). The proposed work is dedicated to the selection and advancement of fusion techniques for further online implementation at www.signalfusion.com. An enhanced geospatial tool ready for online implementation that will be used on various data (e.g. hyperspectral, SAR) is the product anticipated to result at the end of this project.
Agricultural applications (precision farming, crop identification and mapping, yield estimation, productivity forecasting) and land mapping applications (land use/land cover change, estimating biomass, mapping forest degradation, urban planning and development) will be investigated. Agriculture supply companies, agronomists and individual farmers will be surprised by how little training they need to begin processing hyperspectral, multispectral or panchromatic imagery. Governmental agencies and insurance companies will be able to accurately monitor and assess the effects of natural disasters. To run AUG Signals’ powerful image fusion tool it is necessary only to have access to the World Wide Web for perusing data availability and eventually downloading images before processing the data through the online algorithms. The field observations could be interpreted in real time.
AUG Signals’ proposed study for vegetation/soil classification and for land survey applications could make a major difference in time-sensitive management and marketing decisions. The users will be able to detect online changes in satellite images, including those accessible via the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure being built by GeoConnections, a national partnership initiative led by NRCan. The IAC contract will be completed in July 2004.
Toronto, July 2003: A competitive contract has been awarded to A.U.G.Signals to expand its web-based image processing centre available at www.signalfusion.com with advanced change detection tools. To increase the level of integration between processing tools and data, the site will be able to interface directly with online imagery providers adopting the Web Mapping Server (WMS) standard. The site will also integrate a mirror node at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS), part of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan).
“The Government of Canada is proud to support this innovative project,” said the Honourable Herb Dhaliwal,Minister of Natural Resources Canada. “Funding through GeoConnections allows us to support this and other initiatives to build opportunities for Canadians, now and in the future.”
With the new service, users will be able to detect online changes in satellite images, including those accessible via the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure being built by GeoConnections, a national partnership initiative led by NRCan. The information gathered with the new change detection tools will assist in updating topographic databases, which is particularly important for land applications, disaster management, environmental monitoring and search and rescue. “The ability of any person to access and process geospatial information in almost real time at anytime and from anywhere is the heart of this project” said Dr. George Lampropoulos, the president of A.U.G. Signals. “This online tool promotes the innovation and competitiveness of the algorithms suppliers (Government, Industry, Universities) and, furthermore, increases the number of applications and the utilization of geospatial data. A.U.G. Signals is proud to develop this portal and make it a winning project for all Canadians”.
Awarded on behalf of the GeoInnovations program of the GeoConnections, this contract will be completed in May 2004.
A.U.G. Signals’ image processing centre already offers online automatic image registration, as well as image fusion capabilities. As part of the evaluation trial process, this service is FREE for a limited time.
