BEAVERTON, Ore., 5 Jan. 2006. U.S. Army researchers at the Night Vision Electronic Sensor Directorate will use digital watermarking to provide more effective battlefield, port and border intelligence in 2006.
This work will be funded by $1 million appropriated in the recently passed U.S. Department of Defense appropriations bill, according to Digimarc Corp.
Known as "Smart Data Project: Real-Time Geospatial Video Sensor Intelligence for Night Vision Electronic Sensor Directorate (NVESD)," the contract award will be shared among four companies:
* GCS Research, Missoula, Mont.
* Digimarc, Beaverton, Ore.
* S&K Electronics Inc., Ronan, Mont., and
* AquilaVision Inc., Missoula, Mont.
Homeland security and national defense workers rely increasingly on image and sensor data to understand, manage and respond to threats. This is especially true for intelligence, mission planning, and emergency response, Digimarc says.
Today they can create sophisticated situation analyses with the volume and timeliness of data coming from multiple sensors. By directly embedding key sensor and event data in imagery and sensor streams with digital watermarking, analysts will be able to more rapidly synthesize and analyze data from multiple sources -- an essential element to equipping military forces and intelligence personnel with an information advantage and building out the military's network-centric war fighter capabilities.
"This project will demonstrate the value that digital watermarking can bring to image- and sensor-based defense and intelligence applications," said J. Scott Carr, executive vice president of Digimarc.
"By delivering more useful and real-time intelligence to battlefield data, the Army Night Vision group will be able to increase our military's advantage on the battlefield and potentially save the lives of civilians and soldiers alike, while making our military more efficient and effective. Digimarc has a history of successful management and delivery of sensitive, complex digital watermarking programs. We are pleased to be partnering with GCS to deliver this capability to the Army," he said.
"We are very excited to launch this project and begin delivering on a solution that fulfills mission-critical situational awareness to the war fighter," said Alex Philp, president of GCS Research. "GCS is pleased to be working with Digimarc, the pioneer in digital watermarking technology, SKE and AquilaVision on this important project."
Digimarc Corp., based in Beaverton, Ore., is a supplier of secure identity and media management solutions. Digimarc provides products and services that enable the annual production of more than 60 million personal identification documents, including two-thirds of U.S. driver licenses and IDs for more than 20 countries. Digimarc's digital watermarking technology provides a persistent digital identity for various media content and is used to enhance the security of financial documents, identity documents and digital images, and support other media rights management applications.
Digimarc has an extensive intellectual property portfolio, with more than 200 issued U.S. patents with more than 4,000 claims, and approximately 400 pending patent applications in digital watermarking, personal identification and related technologies. The company is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, with other U.S. offices in Burlington, Mass.; Fort Wayne, Ind.; and the Washington, DC, area; and international offices in London and Mexico. For more information, see www.digimarc.com.
