Research Summaries

Back Haloe/Buckeye Technical Support

Fiscal Year 2014
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Physics
Investigator(s) Olsen, Richard C.
Sponsor Army Corps of Engineers (Army)
Summary Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology has rapidly emerged as a powerful mapping tool for military and civilian usage. There are several operational and experimental LiDAR systems in use today, in support of the DoD.
Buckeye is the operational system used by the Army Geospatial Center (AGC) for terrain mapping in theater. This system has been flying in the CENTCOM AOR for several years. AGC is in the process of updating the technology used.
The High Altitude LiDAR Operations Experiment (HALOE) was built by DARPA, and is now being operated in the CENTCOM and other AORs. HALOE uses photon-counting technology to enable high altitude operations (e.g. with the WB-57), which enables more security for the operators than current commercial systems. Current commercial technology is typically operated from systems at altitudes from 500-1000 m. In addition, the higher altitude system has the opportunity for much larger area collection rates.
There are several elements of work needed to improve the utility of these systems. LiDAR technology in general is new enough that many of the tools necessary to exploit such data are rather primitive, and there are a number of important issues to address in terms of automating the Processing/Exploitation elements of the TCPED chain.
Of particular interest for such analysis is the detection of objects under forest canopy - in particular man-made trails under trees. Evolving systems also offer new opportunities for shallow water bathymetry, which is a fundamental requirement for expeditionary warfare, and special operations.
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Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal