Vibrometry Interrogation for Battlefield Exploitation (VIBE)

The objective of VIBE is to develop combat identification (CID) automatic target recognition (ATR) for vibrometry sensor data for use within anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) environments. The technologies developed in VIBE must demonstrate robust, efficient, high-performance, and sustainable technology. Laser vibrometry technology is now sufficiently mature to implement automatic target recognition capabilities. Vibrometry sensors utilize the principal of micro-Doppler measurements between the sensor and target caused by surface deflections. These deflections are due to vibrations mainly caused by mechanical systems (motors) or transformer hum (magnetostriction) during operation of military and civilian vehicles and equipment. These measurements enhance air-to-ground (A/G) and air-to-air (A/A) remote identification of targets. The addition of vibration measurement to the sensor suite provides an additional non-imagery based identification modality at ranges where traditional electro-optical imaging is resolution limited. The vibrometry modality also provides unique capabilities in settings where a vibration signature is available such as facility interrogation, power plant assessment, obscured targets, and Battle Damage Assessment (BDA). Remote vibration sensors are currently under development for combat identification applications. Since the output from such systems is not readily human-interpretable, developing automated processing to assist in the exploitation of signatures from these non-imaging sensors is a critical step in delivering the technology to the warfighter. Vibration signatures sensed from distant vehicles using laser vibrometry systems provide valuable information that may be used to help identify key vehicle features such as engine type, engine speed, number of cylinders, vehicle type, or a fingerprint of the target for identification/recognition tasks. Preliminary work has been performed in which classification algorithms were trained and tested on identical vehicles. However, many factors can affect the observed signal resulting in variability in measurements even from the same vehicle. The vibration signature can vary significantly depending on the sensing location, state of engine degradation and tuning, engine operating conditions, structural loading as well as many other parameters. Thus, the challenge innate to this work is robustly extracting salient features from vibrometry signatures that remain consistent and meaningful even though the signatures vary significantly between "identical" vehicles for tactical range laser vibrometry. VIBE will leverage current state of the art technology to perform A/G CID ATR using laser vibrometry. The government is not interested in any solution which relies on contractor proprietary hardware, software, or data. VIBE consists of a basic algorithm development effort with 4 options to be exercised based on the performance and promise of the developed ATR.