Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS has successfully demo’d the situational awareness benefits of its Full-Motion Video Asset Management Engine (FAME) at Empire Challenge 2008, which was held this summer at China Lake, Calif. Hosted by the U.S. Joint Forces Command and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the annual invitation-only exercise tests and evaluates situational awareness tools that enhance joint and coalition intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance interoperability.
The Harris FAME system, developed with input from intelligence analysts, is a collaborative platform that provides video, audio, and metadata coding, video analytics, and archive capabilities, within a unified digital asset management solution. Simultaneous motion imagery feeds from multiple sensor types and can be ingested, annotated, and shared in real time. Discovery and dissemination of motion imagery products within bandwidth-challenged networks are supported with a thin (remote) web-based client for at-distance access and collaboration. During Empire Challenge 2008, the Harris FAME system played a key role in the Motion Imagery Pilot Initiative. The FAME system’s primary mission was to add value to, and improve the discoverability of, motion imagery. FAME enabled analysts to select from among multiple live Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) feeds or pre-recorded streams and perform exploitation and dissemination in real time within a collaborative environment. Analysts could simultaneously collaborate to annotate the video with mission text chat, telestration, and audio. Annotations were then saved as rich metadata time-associated with the video for later search and retrieval and publication to the DCGS (Distributed Common Ground System) Integration Backbone (DIB). FAME met all objectives of the pilot and demonstrated the benefits in leveraging commercial broadcast technologies for government tactical needs.
“The efficient acquisition, storage, management and dissemination of situational awareness information — particularly full-motion video — is a key challenge for defense and intelligence agencies,” said Lucius Stone, director of Defense Programs for Harris Broadcast Communications. “FAME™ leverages our advanced commercial broadcast technology into the government space and dramatically reduces the time required to get multimedia, situational awareness information into the hands of military commanders and other decision-makers.”
