Toronto, April 2007: AUG Signals is pleased to announce we have secured the Canadian Space Agency’s support for our new project, entitled “Conflation Capabilities for Spaceborne Remote Sensing: Automatic Co-registration and Vector Image Alignment.”
The objective of this work is to advance and expand the existing registration software of AUG Signals. Specifically, novel technologies will be developed to automatically register vector and image data, EO and SAR data at a user defined high registration accuracy.
The uniqueness of the technology lies in its simultaneous utilization of multiple common feature image pairs generated from originally different data sources. Due to the different image characteristics of the different sensors, automatic registration of EO and SAR is always a challenge. Poor accuracy of the geo-information of the vector data and/or image data causes large discrepancies between vectors and the same features presented in the image data when the two datasets are directly overlaid. AUG Signals’ new technology solves these problems by identifying correct control point pairs in the multi-layer feature image pairs. This will lead to novel approaches and solutions that will exploit currently available techniques resulting in increased registration/conflation performance for images from multiple sensors.
These conflation capabilities offer a significant value-added tool for registration – one of the fundamental tools for data analysis – and can be applied to a variety of diverse markets, from agriculture, forestry, and environmental applications to natural resources, topographic mapping, military and defence, etc.
For more information, please contact the Project Manager, Yifeng Li.
Toronto, February 2007: AUG Signals has been awarded a CSA (Canadian Space Agency) contract to develop a polarimetric constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detector using Markov chains. This is an innovative technique that will result in a new class of CFAR detectors, which may either stand alone or complement traditional CFAR detection performance. The anticipated CFAR detection improvement is expected to be as much as 30%.
Target detection is a fundamental analysis tool essential for almost all remote sensing applications. Unlike conventional CFAR detectors that have been designed to detect objects described by point data or with low image resolution, a high-performance Markov chain CFAR detector will make optimal use of the higher resolution information provided by RADARSAT-2. The Markov chain CFAR detector will exploit the finer resolution and selective polarization provided by RADARSAT-2 in order to yield greater detection performance.
This new technology can be used for a variety of military and defense applications such as coastal surveillance, ship detection, detection of land targets, iceberg monitoring, etc. In addition, Markov chain CFAR detector can also be employed in commercial applications, anything from agriculture (compliance monitoring, crop monitoring) and forestry to sea ice monitoring.
Markov chain CFAR detector will solidify Canada’s position as a global leader in remote sensing data provision, applications, and innovative technology.
For more information, please contact the Project Manager, Dr. Chuhong Fei.
Toronto, February 2007: AUG Signals has been chosen to lead an Intelligent Drinking Water monitoring project in partnership with EPCOR Water Services, University of Toronto, Public Health Agency of Canada, Queen’s University Centre for Water and the Environment, and University of Calgary. Funded by Precarn, the objective of the project is to develop an Intelligent Situation Assessment Unit (ISAU) that will detect drinking water contaminants by using inputs from multiple sensors and public health syndromic surveillance data. The water quality analysis will be communicated to water system operators, providing them with early warning of contamination and allowing for an immediate response.
Emerging sensor and intelligent systems technologies create an opportunity for drinking water distribution monitoring to be significantly enhanced. Current methods of laboratory sampling can be improved upon, reducing detection times and the costs of water monitoring. This is particularly true in smaller municipalities and rural regions, where water treatment procedures may not be as sophisticated and water testing facilities and expertise may be limited.
The fusion of sensor and non-sensor information pertaining to water quality is an entirely new application of intelligent systems and may lead to revolutionary methods of detecting drinking water contamination. The project establishes Canada as a leader in drinking water monitoring technology research and innovation.
For more information, please contact the Project Manager, Xia Liu.
Toronto, January 2007: AUG Signals has been awarded a Canadian Space Agency-supported contract to transfer AUG Signals’ automatic registration technology for temporal hyperspectral and polarimetric images from its original application of earth observation to applications for the defence industry and military. The technology will support the use of multiple types of sensors, including infrared, electro-optical, etc.
Toronto, November 2006: Our leading edge image processing, dedicated to specific data processing applications for EO, SAR and other image data, is now available in modules.
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.
