The Marine Mammal Detection System (MMDS) is an airborne sensor platform optimized for marine mammal collection surveys, monitoring, and mitigation; developed as an alternative to human observers.
Background: The MMDS platform, sensors, systems, and processes have the potential to support a virtual whale search watch floor environment where marine mammals can be tracked like intelligence objects displayed as moving icons within digital map display systems. The watch floor can be virtual because it will have no specific location but will serve as a resource to existing marine mammal biologists who operate as mission scientists remote in time and space from the airborne collection platforms. Mission scientists will be able to stay where they are as there will be cooperative sharing of information via the Internet by use of trusted user accounts. All the data collected can be stored in a centralized database server environment to be accessed by professionals with appropriate credentials for the creation of various forms of products to include statistical analysis such as distance survey, marine mammal density databases, and environmental planning support documents.
Objective: The goal of the project is to conduct Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) of a prototype airborne Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance (ISR) system optimized for marine mammal Detection, Classification, and Localization (DCL). A critical factor in the acquisition planning was the development of an affordable aircraft ISR survey system that would be viable as a commercial alternative to existing human observer aircraft. Successful completion of this work will result in improved survey tools to help environmental planners perform Marine Species Mitigation (MSM) processes in support of military training and testing operations, petroleum industry exploration, and national agencies that need marine mammal assessments.
The primary objective of this project is to continue RDT&E related to aircraft based sensors and data dissemination processes. This will include the development of flight ready prototype sensors integrated on-board an affordable aircraft, flight tests, and sensor performance evaluations. The contractor shall conduct engineering support by (1) providing at least one flight-ready prototype sensor suite, (2) providing engineering data to support prototype installation and flight testing, (3) installation of the prototype on-board an aircraft, (4) support for flight test operations in relevant environments, and (5) sensor performance evaluations in relevant environments.
System Summary: Cessna 337G Skymaster (see above image), Search Radar; Electro-Optic Sensors (Visible, Infrared, & Multi-Spectral), and Data Link.
Location: Presently project flight testing is being accomplished along the NE coast of the United States.
Results: Currently, flight testing is continuing with effective results. The search Radar is used as a large area scanner designed to detect surfaced marine mammals as a cueing sensor for the collection of high resolution Visible and Infrared imagery. Image data collected by the airborne platform can be down linked to the ground via the data link or stored for post processing. Image data has two standard formats: annotated JPEGs with date, time, geo-location and other significant collection parameters useful for scientific analysis; and KMZ format imagery wrapped and geo-coded into the ground plane for display within Google Earth freeware.
The image below demonstrates proof-of-concept capability of detecting marine mammals by search radar, then cueing the EO sensor for image collection. The annotated image includes date, time, geo-location of scene center and other metadata parameters needed for DCL analysis.
