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

• 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 combat expert at the lab's technology division.

"If Marines are forced to be buttoned up inside the vehicle, this gives them a chance to have situational awareness all around. Its purpose is to enhance force protection and reduce threat exposure," he says.

The Army and Air Force also have expressed interest in the system and are in discussions with the manufacturer, Sarnoff Corp., says Mark Chapin, the company's director of national defense and homeland security business, based in Princeton, N.J.

"Innovations in video processing allow for complete situational awareness around the vehicle during day or night operations and enable the operator to focus more on mission tasks than on the need to control camera systems and interpret sensor data," says Chapin.

The CVAC2 sensor suite sits atop a vehicle and consists of a thermal infrared imager, a day/night zoom camera, a laser rangefinder, and 12 daytime and 12 night vision cameras. Together these sensors monitor the surroundings. Two Global Positioning System antennae provide location data for the vehicle and the corresponding sensor and video feeds, which are layered on top of each other and are stitched together into a continuous 360-degree "strip" displayed on a computer screen. Once a potential threat is detected, the cameras and sensors can swivel...