Advanced Tactical Facial Recognition at a Distance Technology There has long been a need to quickly identify persons at long range with high accuracy. For tactical applications, solutions need to be compact, lightweight and frugal with power. Solutions also need to be fully functional in environments where communications are limited or non-existent. Challenges to meeting these requirements are: 1) obtaining sufficient face image resolution at long range, 2) removal of image distortion caused by atmospheric effects, 3) accurately matching facial images obtained from unconstrained, non-ideal poses. We will conduct a feasibility study to determine if current technologies are adequate to provide high-accuracy biometric identification of persons at ranges between 600 and 1,100 meters. We will identify optical components and compact computing hardware likely to satisfy requirements. These will be integrated with top-performing image correction and facial matching algorithms to produce one or more laboratory systems tested in realistic operating conditions. Accuracy of facial matching performance will be assessed for various system configurations tested for several operating scenarios. The feasibility study will identify the best performing system architecture using best-of-breed technologies. Test results and a preliminary design for a prototype to be developed in Phase II will also be included.
