Project SeaWatch: Flexible AI Coastal Monitoring

对英国沿海和海洋环境的监视比以往任何时候都更加重要。作为一个岛国和贸易大国，我们必须保护和保护我们海岸线沿线的海洋。渔业、货运、搜索和救援以及环境保护共同构成了对现有资源的重大挑战。这些挑战也反映在海外，包括非洲沿海地区的挑战。“SeaWatch”项目将通过一架带有特别改装的人工智能3D摄像系统的自主无人机（UAV），为海上监视提供低成本的贡献。UAVAid和Archangel Imaging联合开发了一种创新系统，该系统采用成熟的技术，为用户提供了显著的能力和资源提升。“海洋观察”将能够自主监测大片海域，仅在用户需要的异常情况下报告警报。使用无人机进行搜索降低了成本，消除了风险，更好地利用了稀缺的人力资源，但它也有自己的缺点：多项研究表明，使用基于电视摄像机的监控系统的主要失败机制之一是“发现”感兴趣的问题的人为错误。该项目将设计、开发和演示一个完全集成和全自动的系统，专门针对沿海海上搜索进行优化，使用现有无人机平台的扩展开发，开发用于在具有挑战性的海上环境中操作，进行物理搜索。再加上现有的基于人工智能的图像处理系统的扩展开发，以识别图像中感兴趣的问题，以及快速部署的无线网络的新发展，使系统能够快速部署到任何所需的位置。该系统将与AIS数据库集成，用于船舶交叉参考，以支持沿海水域法规管理和执行的自动化。“SeaWatch”由UAVAid提供的一架现有的、经过验证的无人机，与Archangel Imaging的算法和Cerebella任务管理系统相结合，可以同时控制多个远程传感器系统及其启用AI的3D相机。

Surveillance of the United Kingdom's coastal, maritime environment is more important than ever. As an island nation and trading power, we must protect and secure the seas along our coastline. Fisheries, cargo, Search And Rescue and environmental protection alone combine to provide a significant challenge for available resources. These challenges are mirrored overseas contexts, including the challenging coastal areas of Africa.Project "SeaWatch" will provide a low-cost contribution to maritime surveillance, via an autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle ("UAV") with a specially-adapted, AI-enabled 3D camera system. UAVAid and Archangel Imaging have combined to produce an innovative system designed with proven technology to deliver a significant uplift in capability and resources to the user. SeaWatch will be able to autonomously monitor vast areas of the sea, only reporting alerts for anomalies that are desired by the user.Using a UAV to search reduces cost, eliminates risk and makes better use of scarce human resources, but it has its own drawback: multiple studies show that one of the main failure mechanisms of using TV camera-based monitoring systems is human error in "spotting" the issue of interest. This project will design, develop and demonstrate a fully-integrated and fully-automatic system, specifically optimised for carrying out coastal maritime searches, using an extended development of an existing UAV platform, developed to operate in the challenging maritime environment, to conduct the physical search, coupled with an extended development of an existing artificial-intelligence based image processing system to identify issues of interest in the images and a new development in rapidly-deployable wireless networks to allow the system to be deployed quickly to any desired location. The system will integrate with AIS databases for vessel cross referencing to support automation of management and enforcement of coastal waters regulations."SeaWatch" comprises an existing, proven UAV, provided by UAVAid, coupled to AI technology in the form of Archangel Imaging's algorithms & Cerebella mission management system, which can control numerous remote sensor systems at once and also their AI-enabled 3D cameras.