The Science of Surveillance

From traffic monitoring to building security to overhead surveillance on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, there is a rapidly growing demand for surveillance capability.

The technology that drives this explosive growth is digital video compression, and Indiana is strongly positioned to become a major player in the field. What makes our state unique is the combination of high demand for video compression technologies and world-class research and development resources. With the help of a 21st Century Research and Technology Fund grant, Dr. Ed Delp, Silicon Valley Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, is coordinating an effort to focus these resources more sharply on development of video compression technologies for security applications.

To enhance Indiana’s ability to compete and participate in shaping future technologies, this research effort will bring together three Indiana companies (Delphi Delco Electronics Systems, Thomson, and EG&G) and one defense center (U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division) that have needs for new video compression techniques or have developed new techniques in video compression. These will be joined by three Indiana universities (Purdue University, the University of Notre Dame, and IUPUI) that have extensive video research programs. The goal of this collaboration is to create novel technologies that meet the need for advanced digital video compression in the military and general surveillance markets.

According to Dr. Delp, "Our goal will be to investigate the novel deployment of emerging video compression methods. We will also investigate new compression paradigms for low-complexity video encoding that have great promise in mobile applications such as airborne surveillance." In addition to the direct economic benefits such new technologies offer, this team effort will train graduate and undergraduate students and give them an incentive to pursue careers in Indiana.