1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS. World's highest resolution video surveillance platform by DARPA
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in surveillance threads as a concrete example of persistent wide-area aerial surveillance that already existed in 2013.
What it is
A short clip about DARPA's ARGUS-IS, a 1.8 gigapixel wide-area camera array flown on a Boeing unmanned helicopter. It produces a huge mosaic video that can watch a city-sized area from 20,000 feet.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2013 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Cites shubb · 2013-08 · on “What a 600,000-megapixel-wide picture looks like”
Working with satellite data I can tell you that the maximum resolution data you are likely to get from a satellite is 0.25m resolution (i.e. a pixel is the size of a car wheel). And that's talking about likely military satellites - the public are lucky to get hold of 0.5m resolution. Also, clouds get in the way. A lot. For super high resolution imaginary like you are talking about, you need something like the ARGOS system [1]. This image was made by a slowly automatically rotating camera, but the ARGOS system seems to use a whole bunch of high resolution cameras, like a insects eye. The interesting thing about the ARGOS demo on NPR was the automatic object tracking. The system can track cars
Cites mxfh · 2014-02 · on “New surveillance technology can track everyone in an area for several hours”
I'm afraid this Wide Area Motion Imagery (WAMI) is a real thing in the industry now, and not going away. It's even covered by the OGC [1], see their primer on the topic [2] DARPA ARGIS-IS is already deployed to UAVs[3] and actually gives you video, not jaggy-looking stitched DOP slideshows [4]. it looks like DARPA is way ahead of Northrop Grumman which tries to get into that market with more traditional expensive optical hardware, compared to DARPA's cheap phone camera array, yet with inferior results. [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [pdf] [3] [LINK] [4] [this video] [video]
Cites themeek · 2015-05 · on “Neural network chip built using memristors”
This is one of the exotic devices in DARPA's UPSIDE competition for exascale computing. This initiative seeks to find non-state (non-transistor) based approaches to computation: exploitation of nanoscale response properties of discrete components to perform some restricted, non-binary, forms of computation. Essentially, exotic ways to abuse silicon lithography to get analog computation. The idea, and this can be seen on DARPA's slides ( [LINK] ), is to get computation that is several orders of magnitude higher for their specialized sets of problems than what can theoretically be reached by traditional computing models even if Moore's law continues. DARPA would like to first apply this techno
Cites awch · 2015-06 · on “FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities”
ARGUS-IS "ARGUS is an advanced camera system that uses hundreds of cellphone cameras in a mosaic to video and auto-track every moving object within a 36 square mile area. ARGUS is a form of Wide Area Persistent Surveillance that allows for one camera to provide such detailed video that users can collect 'pattern-of-life' data and track individual people inside the footage anywhere within the field of regard." [0] [this video] [1] [LINK]
Cites 6d0debc071 · 2015-08 · on “The Uber endgame: privatized public transit”
The existence of this system is rather odd then: [this video] Not that the level of surveillance that's becoming possible (and even expected) isn't deeply repugnant, I'm just not convinced it's quite as cheap as you make it out to be.
Cites dogma1138 · 2015-10 · on “Surveillance planes spotted in the sky for days after West Baltimore rioting”
Something similar has been demoed publicly before by DARPA. [this video] I still don't see an argument here, just quotes from an editorial, can US intelligence agencies track everyone in the continental US sure, they can also enforce traffic using AGM-114's doesn't mean they do.
Cites TeMPOraL · 2016-01 · on “Why NSA Surveillance Scares Me”
Nice :). Check that one as well, DARPA's 1.8 gigapixel camera for continous monitoring of, well, small cities from altitudes up to 20 000 feet. And something tells me that's not the real state of the art. [this video]
Cites throwawaycanada · 2019-08 · on “Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US”
This is a documentary clip from 2013 that shows what the cameras and systems in these blimps can do. Apparently the biggest breakthrough is their high bandwidth laser data communication system. The government should not have this much information asymmetry relative to the citizenry. [this video] [this video]