Harris showcases CorvusEye system that provides wide-area imagery from manned aircraft

CHICAGO—Harris is showcasing its CorvusEye technology that provides full-resolution video or infrared imagery covering a wide area from a manned aircraft in its booth at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) show this week.

With CorvusEye—technology that was part of the Harris purchase of Exelis in May—a manned aircraft flying in a pattern at about 15,000 feet can use the system to record imagery over a wide area, which provides a big-picture view of a piece of critical infrastructure or an event, according to Mike Hayes, director of product development at Harris.

“In one single system, we can see over a 3-kilometer diameter area—kind of a city-sized area or a football stadium—to monitor a large event. In the past, you’d need multiple camera systems to see different areas that you’re interested in,” Hayes said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “With CorvusEye, you can see full-resolution [imagery] in up to 10 regions of interest.

“Basically, we record the entire area up in the plane, like a DVR in the sky. Then, you’re able to drill into 10 individual areas across the area at full resolution, to see what’s happening.”

Within these regions of interest, CorvusEye images can be viewed at high resolutions that allow a viewer to discern the number of people in a group, the color of clothing and the direction that they moving, Hayes said. However, the resolution is not great enough to employ facial-recognition technology, he said.

“There are full-motion video systems out there that do very good high-resolution, narrow-field-of-view , so they are really good at the car chase, high-definition identification and chasing one thing,” Hayes said. “CorvusEye is its complement that covers the entire city. Even if you’re not watching an area, we’re recording another area and can start watching that area without losing track of the first one.

“So, it’s a complementary technology.”

The CorvusEye package is similar in size to other 15-centimeter video systems that are used on manned aircraft, so the CorvusEye can be switched with one of those systems in about 30 minutes, if needed, Hayes said.

Anther feature of the flexible CorvusEye solution is that it can provide useful images under any light conditions, Hayes said.

“One of the big differentiators of CorvusEye is that it is a day and night imager in one small package,” he said. “We have full color during the day and infrared during the night, so there’s not a time where CorvusEye can’t see what’s going on.”