JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. –
Research spearheaded by a team at Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division Lakehurst, looking at ways to improve deck safety on a ship while freeing up Sailors to do other more critical jobs, received Naval Innovative, Science and Engineering (NISE) funding.
The Night Operations Character Transcription & Recognition for Naval Aircraft Logistics (NOCTRNAL) team is developing an algorithm to recognize aircraft side numbers, which would help ship personnel locate everything on a flight deck without relying on human capital.
Project lead Dr. Todd Morehouse said the idea to automate asset tracking on the flight deck came directly from the fleet and is part of a larger research effort at Lakehurst to revolutionize aircraft tracking on the flight deck. Last year, Lakehurst's Panoramic Tracking of Real-time Information for the Ouija Tabletop (PATRIOT) team received the NISE Outstanding Project Award for their work using cameras and artificial intelligence to auto-populate the Ouija board. Morehouse noted that NOCTRNAL is one project that falls under the much larger PATRIOT research umbrella.
“The goal of the PATRIOT system is to increase and automate situational awareness of all the activity occurring on flight decks,” Morehouse said. “The capability being researched as part of NOCTRNAL fits perfectly within that goal by providing that fine-grain tail number information. With that information, the overall accuracy of the system improves, and consequently its usefulness to the Sailors.”
Morehouse said NOCTRNAL has three main components: Aircraft object detection; A pan-tilt-zoom camera; and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to identify aircraft on the flight deck.
The aircraft object detection uses machine learning to identify aircraft, while the program's cameras use optical and thermal sensors to identify aircraft at night or during inclement weather.
"This is not only automating the process for the Sailors so they can focus on other tasks, but it's also improving reliability when conditions are difficult or when the Sailors are overloaded with many tasks at once," Morehouse said.
The team is currently looking at algorithms and the best way to integrate the data into one package that can be used for future testing. Morehouse said his group had originally applied for funding through the Department of Defense’s Innovation Challenge but was not one of the programs chosen. However, he said the NISE funding validates the importance of their work.
"I think they saw the need for this project. It's something that's necessary to integrate PATRIOT into the Marine Aviation Data Management System (MADAMS), so they followed up and said we still want to fund this for the remainder of the year, and we are looking to have it funded for next year as well," Morehouse said.
Having only started working at Lakehurst in November 2023, Morehouse said this has been a unique first project to work on.
"Working for defense contractors or academia, everyone has the same goal: everybody really enjoys seeing the product transition and helping it reach the fleet or wherever it's going," Morehouse said. "It's cool being here, where we can be in between and focus on helping the warfighter.”
From Naval Air Surface Warfare Center, Lakehurst, New Jersey. 