SBIR-STTR Award

Low-Shot Detection in Remote Sensing Imagery
Award last edited on: 8/1/2019

Sponsored Program
SBIR
Awarding Agency
DOD : NGA
Total Award Amount
$99,958
Award Phase
1
Solicitation Topic Code
NGA172-002
Principal Investigator
Jill Crisman

Company Information

Next Century Corporation

2701 Technology Drive Suite 300
Annapolis Junction, MD 20701
   (443) 545-3100
   N/A
   www.nextcentury.com
Location: Single
Congr. District: 02
County: Howard

Phase I

Contract Number: HM047618C0004
Start Date: 10/31/2017    Completed: 7/31/2018
Phase I year
2018
Phase I Amount
$99,958
Next Century Corporation proposes the development of Muggsy, a low-shot deep learning detection prototype system that learns to recognize uncommon targets in remote imagery. Our Phase I research extends and leverages an image classification system of our own design called EvoDevo. EvoDevo evolves its own neural network architecture before training to meet the complexity of the data. Muggsy uses learned features from a standard DCNN trained on massive sets of social media photos. We replace the final layers of the DCNN with EvoDevo and train it on the low-shot exemplars and a large collection of unlabeled remote images. This will allow Muggsy to outperform other computer vision systems in low-shot target detection and adapt to different sensor modalities (e.g., EO, MSI, and SAR). In addition, in Phase II we will extend our image generation algorithm SIGHTT to create more realistic images to extend the low-shot exemplars. We will evolve an adversarial neural network to transform our typical synthetic image to become more like real images. In this manner, we will be able to extend the training data to offer better detection capabilities on targets with few examples.

Phase II

Contract Number: ----------
Start Date: 00/00/00    Completed: 00/00/00
Phase II year
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Phase II Amount
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