Articles

Toronto, December 2010: The Canadian Space Agency has awarded AUG Signals with a contract to increase the utilization of RADARSAT-2 data amongst government end users by way of developing a change detection tool specifically designed for military and agricultural applications based on the RADARSAT-2 fully polarimetric data.
In collaboration with two government end users: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and the Department of National Defence (DND), algorithms will be developed for automatic Covariance Equalization (CE) change detection capability using fully polarimetric RADARSAT2 data, enhanced and optimized polarimetric InSAR coherence for Coherent Change Detection (CCD), more comprehensive and enhanced change detection utilizing combined/fused CE and CCD, capability to identify military targets and boundaries/acreage changes over time, and rapid and robust change detection processing.
This technology will greatly benefit the end users by providing the ability to accurately detect the desired changes even with registration errors and low coherence associated with vegetation covers. It will also provide a more comprehensive picture of the detected changes on both subpixel level and subtle level. In terms of agricultural applications, the resulting capabilities could be applied to not only the boundaries/acreages, but also differences in crop type, crop growth stage and crop indicators like crop height, biomass and leaf area index. In military applications, the technology will enhance the ability to monitor enemy resources or activities during reconnaissance, detecting suspicious activity during surveillance, providing scouting ability for a moving convoy, and supporting situational awareness when protecting garrisons or high-value targets.
For more information, please contact Dr. Ting Liu, the Project Manager.

Toronto, September 2010: The study, supported by the Public Security Technical Program (PSTP), will examine persistent surveillance capabilities in Maritime, Great Lakes, and St. Lawrence Seaway (GLSLS) border regions, and Canada’s preparedness to counter the small vessel threat. It will employ a systematic and interdisciplinary, qualitative analysis to better understand the current and arising capability gaps relating to port-based (GLSLS and maritime) and coastline/shoreline persistent small vessel surveillance, and evaluate potential technological approaches that will address these gaps.

This will provide a roadmap to designing a Surveillance, Intelligence and Interdiction (SII) solution aimed at countering asymmetric threats and improving border management in the maritime and GLSLS inshore regions. This will be achieved by identifying the most suitable and complementary technologies for identification and tracking of anomalous targets and target behaviour, and a multi-sensor information fusion approach, which will allow for persistent surveillance and the accurate, robust and timely identification of small vessels – compliant and non-compliant.
Consortium Partners:

Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC) – (Federal Lead and Project Champion)

A.U.G. Signals Ltd.

Blue Force Global Special Services Group Ltd.

CFN Consultants

AKW Global Enterprises

For more information, please contact Tatyana Litvak, the Project Manager.

Toronto, July 2010: DRDC Atlantic is developing the capability to detect, recognize and identify small sea craft in images from EO/IR sensors (visible, night vision and infrared cameras). To facilitate these efforts, DRDC-Atlantic has awarded AUG Signals a contract to develop a software tool consisting of a user interface with several specific image analysis algorithms, which will further enhance small craft detection and tracking capabilities.

Detectability and other associated tasks depend on various parameters, including the clutter of the sea background, the white-water wake from the boat, and the diurnal environmental conditions. The technologies to be developed under this contract will include conversion of video streams to image sequences, determination of the sky-sea horizon, background sensor large scale non-uniformity correction, small craft and white-water wake demarcation, time-range synchronization, small craft tracking, image enhancement, and pixel-based contrast metrics

For more information, please contact Dr. Abhijit Sinha, Project Manager.

San Francisco, June 2010: AUG Signals announced today that it has been chosen by The Artemis Project™ as a winner of the 2010 Top 50 Water Companies Competition. This award distinguishes AUG Signals as a leading company in one of the greatest high-growth industries of the 21st Century. AUG Signals was selected by a panel of industry experts based on four criteria: technology, intellectual property and know-how, team and market potential.

“The Artemis Project’s Top 50 Water Companies Competition winners have excelled in key areas of the emerging advanced water technology sector,” said Laura Shenkar, Principal of The Artemis Project™. “We are excited to showcase these innovative companies and congratulate them for their achievements in creating solutions that will reinvent the water landscape.”

About The Artemis Project™

Established in 2000, The Artemis Project™ is a boutique consulting practice that brings unique capabilities to 21st century water management. It combines an understanding of the most advanced water resource management solutions with an international network of developers, investors and users of advanced water technology.

As the leading authority on applying advanced water solutions to business operations, The Artemis Project™ specializes in developing holistic water management strategies for major corporations. The Artemis Project™ also supports product launches of advanced water technology into business operations worldwide. The Artemis Project™ actively participates in water industry events and supports environmental policy initiatives. More information is available at http://www.theartemisproject.com.

The Artemis Project™ cooperates with the BlueTech Blog – the hub for discussion of advanced water technology. Recently, AUG Signals&rsquote; water technologies have been showcased by the BlueTech Blog. Please visit It’s Time for the Smart Water Grid and Smart Water Saves Water, Money and Lives.

Toronto, March 2010: DRDC Suffield has awarded AUG Signals a contract to develop a module that will perform fault-tolerant state estimation (FTSE) using global positioning system (GPS), inertial measurement unit (IMU), odometer and visual sensors.

The project will:

-Develop an accurate kinematic model that will contribute to developing precise navigation for UGVs
-Detect sensor failures fast while conceding very low rate of false alarm
-The detected faulty sensors/sensor systems will be isolated/accommodated/repaired. In addition, once a sensor declared faulty becomes operational again it will be utilized in the kinematic state estimation.
-Develop an ego-motion module that will help to show the utility of such a system, facilitate experimentation in the short run, and contribute to the development of state-of-the-art visual information based operational navigation system in the long run
-Provide a base for experimentation and help the future development of robust operational FTSE for not only UGVs but also in other related challenging fields such as UAV or UUV navigation
-Allow sensor API module to be modified to meet future needs for sensor upgrades and varying input data types, without changing the FTSE module itself
-Facilitate fast and cost-effective future development in this area under supervision from DRDC-Suffield

For more information, please contact Dr. Abhijit Sinha, Project Manager.

Toronto, September 2009: End of the cold war era sparked renewed interest in asymmetric warfare due to the transformation of adversaries to entities of significantly lower resources who use significantly different tactics than the conventional forces. In the case of the Navy, this transition dictates the development of sensor systems that can detect and identify low contrast objects, such as small boats, before they can breach the defensive layers of ships. Effectiveness of asymmetric warfare adversary and the importance of counter-measures against them are apparent from the events like USS Cole attack and piracy attacks near the coast of Somalia, where Canada is providing security to commercial ships as a part of a multinational team.

AUG Signals has been awarded a DRDC-Atlantic contract that aims to analyze an extensive set of EO/IR image data for the purposes of:

1. Estimation of contrast signatures of small boat pixels in four EO/IR bands for different aspect angles, ranges, boat sizes and boat types.

2. Estimation of contrast signatures of white-water bow wake pixels in four EO/IR bands for different aspect angles, ranges, and boat sizes, types and speeds.

Over the course of the project, a fully automated algorithm to detect the small boats and their wakes, and to separate them will be developed. This will be accomplished by a three-stage procedure:

1. CFAR detection of small boats together with their wakes in single frame images
2. Clutter reduction in CFAR detection results
3. Separation of small boats from wakes using image sequences

AUG Signals’ detection, clutter reduction and segmentation algorithms will be adapted for the demarcation of small boats and wakes using EO/IR image sequences. EO/IR contrast signatures of boats and wakes will be estimated by adapting an algorithm available in the literature.

For more information, please contact Dr. Abhijit Sinha.

Toronto, June 2009: ISTPCanada has announced it will fund AUG Signals’ and SoftTeam Solutions’ project aimed at the development of a software product that will automatically and non-invasively detect and recognize tumours using positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. Developing an automated means to detect tumours will eliminate the time-consuming, exhausting and potentially error-prone task of tracing out tumours. This will allow medical experts to concentrate on analysis and diagnosis, with the result of speeding up and improving tumour diagnosis.

Consortium Partners:

AUG Signals (Toronto)
SoftTeam Solutions (Chennai)
Hospital For Sick Children (Toronto)
Christian Medical College and Hospital (Vellore)
Dr. Kamakshi Memorial Hospital (Chennai)

For more information, please contact Tatyana Litvak

Toronto, March 2009: Sustainable Technology Development Canada (SDTC), an arm’s-length corporation created by the Government of Canada as part of its commitment to create a healthy environment and a high quality of life for all Canadians, will support AUG Signals’ large-scale demonstration project of the Intelligent Drinking Water Monitoring System (IDWMS) in EPCOR’s Edmonton Waterworks System.

IDWMS is an early warning digital signal processing software system with associated sensor sites that is designed to provide water purveyors and appropriate health authorities with real-time, continuous drinking water surveillance tool to facilitate early detection and identification of waterborne anomalies, addressing both accidental and intentional contamination scenarios as well as infrastructure failure. This includes identification of waterborne contaminants – chemical and biological – and detection of water leaks that result from ruptured pipes.

Consortium Members

A.U.G. Signals Ltd.
EPCOR Water Services
Communications Research Centre Canada
National Water Research Institute
University of Toronto
University of Calgary
FuseForward International Inc.

For more information, please contact Tatyana Litvak

Toronto, February 2009: AUG Signals has been awarded a DRDC-Atlantic Image Processing Support contract with the objective to implement an Image Processing Library (IPL) with several image processing tools to be applied to Automated Ship Image Acquisition (ASIA) images in order to extract specific information. The IPL suite will have the following capabilities:

1) Evaluate each ASIA image quality based on factors including exposure, focus, contrast, size, obscurity.
2) Perform image enhancement.
3) Extract the required ship information (such as size, orientation, location, presence of wake, and so on) by outlining the ship from the image.
4) Recognize the text printed on the ship body.

IPL will be implemented by integrating several AUG Signals software modules into a complete software suite: image evaluation and enhancement module, image segmentation and detection module, motion segmentation module, multi-frame image enhancement module and OCR module.

For more information please contact Dr. Ting Liu.

AUTOMATIC IMAGE REGISTRATION (AIR)