Second Annual Workshop on Naval Applications of Machine Learning

Kitware will present research in maritime video analytics at the Second Annual Workshop on Naval Applications of Machine Learning (NAML) at SPAWAR in San Diego, CA, February 13-15.

Event Details:

The second annual workshop on NAML is a three day event with oral and poster presentations focused on autonomy, computer vision and cybersecurity for the Navy.  It will be held at the Topside location of SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific with participation from the Navy, Department of Defense (DoD) and intelligence communities, as well as industry and academia.  According to the NAML website, the goals of this conference are to spread awareness of current machine learning research relevant to Navy applications, to connect machine learning researchers with experts in Navy needs and requirements, and to build and strengthen collaborations within the DoD research community.  Check out their website for more details and for the full agenda, which will be released soon.

Details:

Dr. Arslan Basharat, a Technical Leader in the Computer Vision Group at Kitware will speak about Small Target Detection using a Spatiotemporal Autoencoder.  This presentation will discuss methods Kitware uses to detect small targets, such as a boat or vessel, in aerial video collected from a distance on open water.  An unsupervised approach will be used to learn the visual appearance and dynamics of open water under various sea states, illumination conditions and viewing angles.  Using hours of videos of open water, Kitware is able to perform unsupervised training in order to address this challenging technical problem.  Be sure to regularly check in on the NAML website for an updated full agenda in order to attend this technical presentation.

Kitware’s Computer Vision group recognizes the value of advancing computer vision and deep learning in order to push capabilities beyond the state-of-the-art in supporting the Navy, DoD, Intelligence, and Law Enforcement communities.  We have worked with various agencies, such as the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).  Kitware has developed and deployed an operational Wide Area Motion Imagery (WAMI) tracking systems for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) in theatre, providing analysts with exploitation capabilities that fuse sensors, platforms, and people.  Our work with DARPA on Squad-X has led to extensive research, development, and deployment of robust methods to more accurately identify and track objects and people, delivered straight to the soldier on the ground. In addition, Kitware is continually improving their KitWare Image and Video Exploitation and Retrieval (KWIVER) toolkit, which is an open source framework for video and image analytics built from Kitware’s years of experience developing analytic systems for various customers in multiple domains.  Please visit our computer vision and KWIVER webpages for more information into our key focus areas and experience.

Contact:

Please reach out to computervision@kitware.com to schedule meetings throughout this event.  Arslan Basharat will be on-hand for in depth conversations.  We are looking forward to engaging with this community and sharing information on Kitware’s ongoing research and capability development in computer vision and deep learning as well as our cutting-edge open source vision software, KWIVER.