News Release

Lehigh U. Professor's invention detects enemy infiltrators

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Lehigh University


Lehigh University Professor Terrence Boult with omnidirectional camera, with projected image in background.

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LOTS - it's a short acronym with a tall future as a life saver for U.S. troops in future combat situations.

The Lehigh Omnidirectional Tracking System is being developed by Terrance Boult, who is the Robert W. Wieseman Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. When operational, it will enable American troops to locate and track remote enemy soldiers attempting to infiltrate U.S. positions.

Boult says LOTS is built around a specially developed camera that has a 360-degree field of view and unique software that can track moving targets and remove the distortion of the omnidirectional camera. By using LOTS, commanders can easily watch large areas and discern the action from images that are fed to a monitor.

Previous remote tracking devices have used traditional video cameras to scan back and forth across a landscape. But this allows infiltrators to move around without being detected when the lens is focused elsewhere.

LOTS, however, provides the U.S. military with constant, uninterrupted surveillance in all directions. If anything moves, camera and software immediately detect the movement and feed the information back to a command center.

"Our camera doesn't have to move so we can develop a model of every part of the viewing area," Boult says. "When someone wearing camouflage moves into that area and the motion is not expected, the system picks it up."

LOTS is designed to operate continuously, but video will be accessed only on command. Most versions of the system will display a continuously updated map of the area under surveillance. The software is programmed so that the instant a figure is detected, LOTS identifies it with an icon that appears on the map to alert viewers with a monitor that an enemy is present. If commanders wish to analyze the icon they can access video images that isolate the intruder in a box. Confidence that there is a target is encoded via colors, and images of significant targets are saved for later analysis.

LOTS, which is funded through grants from the U.S. Defense Department, has been tested by the U.S. Army at Fort Benning in Georgia. "The army owns five of our systems and they have placed them in the field for trials to determine if a soldier can sneak through the surveillance," Boult says. Recently, the system took part in a two-week, multi-vendor comparison at Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo.

The U.S. Navy is also interested in LOTS for possible use aboard submarines, says Boult. Submarine commanders envision a system attached to a periscope that would enable them to maintain a constant watch on the horizon up to 10 kilometers away in any direction.

Boult and his colleagues are also working on an infra red version of LOTS that will operate at night. Their work is done in Lehigh's Visual and Software Technology (VAST) Laboratory.

Boult developed LOTS with Shree Niyar, professor of computer science at Columbia University, where Boult did his undergraduate and graduate work and taught for eight years before coming to Lehigh in 1998. Boult and Niyar are working with Remote Reality Inc. of Massachusetts, to commercialize versions of the LOTS system.

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