INTERVIEW: Geospacial experts on supreme reveals 2012 sector's challenges

Feb. 21, 2012 - PRLog -- In reality the battlefield is reliant on up to date, real time and integrated technological platforms that are necessary in rapidly altering combat environments.

GEOSPACE EUROPE 2012 is the forerunner in unveiling cutting edge defense GEOINT technologies. Speakers presenting at the event consider innovations supreme in resolving security and conflict considerations. Commodore Pat Tyrrell, Deputy Chief Executive from Defense Communication Services Agency MOD UK and Dr Peter S. Sapaty, Director of Distributed Simulation and Control from National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine were willing to share their thoughts in a pre-conference interview.  

QUESTION 1: What are the challenges facing key decision makers regarding real time data flow?
ANSWER by Commodore Pat Tyrrell: The key challenge for interoperability and integration is to think in a "data-centric" mode rather than the current "systems-centric" approaches that we get at the moment. By focusing on the data element we can ensure that the right information is passed in the form that the decision maker requires in a timely manner. We can also, using some new tools that are becoming available, ensure that only those who need to see the data, will see the data.

QUESTION 2: A multiple "Drone" environment poses real situational awareness issues in the battle field, is it possible to create a single system to communicate with the entire swarm?

ANSWER by Dr Peter Sapaty: Despite evident successes of remote control of drones, there are also serious technical and psychological problems arising from the use of remote pilots operating before computer screens in a gaming mode and being actually out of real battlefield loop. There is also a rapidly growing need of using many drones together in real campaigns, in both civil and military areas, as well as of ground, surface or underwater robots. Organization of cooperative work of even two UAVs, by two remote pilots, even if sitting together and communicating directly, may be an enormously complex problem in dynamic situations at the operational theater. Good organization of the human group may not necessarily result in the needed integrity and performance as a system of the physically (and in certain sense logically) separated multiple equipment. Only effective automated up to fully automatic self-organization of the swarm, operating as a single entity and pursuing global goals, can provide the solution for collective use of UAVs.

For example the developed Spatial Grasp Ideology and Technology can dynamically convert the whole UAV swarm with possibly tens, hundreds, or even thousands of units into an integral self-organized but at the same time externally controllable entity, with its intelligence not so in individual units but rather in between them, in the group as a whole. The operational scenario in a special high-level language can be created on the fly and initially injected, in a super-virus mode, into any available unit, dynamically covering the whole group, setting its collective behavior (internal command and control and global awareness including) and providing pursuit of local and global goals. With this approach, the whole group, regardless of the number of unmanned elements in it, can be effectively tasked and controlled by a single human operator directly interacting with the group’s spatial intelligence rather than with individual physical units, the number of which can vary during the scenario execution (as some units can be damaged while other ones involved at runtime).

Details of the technology will be revealed at the summit, altogether with the latest findings of other presenting speakers who deliver speeches on major challenges in C4ISR, technology in UAV surveillance and image analysis, GIS expertise for Maritime security, situational awareness in Net Centric operations, 3D mapping technology techniques or unmet needs of GIS for ground soldiers. GEOSPACE EUROPE 2012 will be held on 24-25 May 2012 in Brussel, the European Geospatial Intelligence HQ. Visit the website for more information about the program and registration.  

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