They're watching you: 360-degree sensor to help troops nab insurgents.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 01 July 2009
• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Published date: 01 July 2009
• Author: Jean, Grace V.

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Nabbing insurgents before they can plant roadside bombs or finding enemy snipers before they shoot have been among the toughest challenges that the U.S. military has faced in current conflicts.

Troops traveling in convoys are trained to look for suspicious activity, but they cannot see everything. Another problem is that most vehicle sensors require time-consuming video analysis, which means that troops are not always able to react in a timely manner.

Later this year, the Marine Corps will be testing a new humvee-mounted system that may provide better real-time intelligence of the surrounding battlefield. Instead of being a single camera, this system combines 29 different sensor outputs and creates a picture that would show instantly what threats might lurk.

The technology--called the computer vision assisted combat capability, or CVAC2--fuses multiple sensor outputs into one real-time, 360-degree "common operating picture."

A prototype will be delivered this summer to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va., for evaluation and demonstration beginning in September, says Maj. Scot Jaworski, a ground...