Challenge: Better than Meets the Eye: Reliable Object Detection Amongst the Waves

Challenge Statement

The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) are seeking innovative solutions to assist Maritime lookouts to quickly and reliably detect, characterize, and track objects of interest in order to improve the efficiency and safety of maritime operations.

Background and Context

A lookout is a person responsible for observing everything –both sights and sounds—within an assigned sector on a ship in order to alert the Officers of the Watch (OOW) of potential issues. They are often the first person to observe danger and the safety of the ship depends on their training, alertness, and constant vigilance. The role of a lookout is to spot and quickly classify contacts during their watch, which includes navigational hazards (e.g. small boats, logs, semi-submerged containers, fishing equipment, ice, etc.) that can tear into a ship’s hull, as well as threats (e.g. small unmanned surface or aircraft systems, etc.). It can be exceedingly difficult to spot a wisp of smoke of an approaching vessel, a small flash of sunlight on the wing tip of an aircraft, etc. Despite its critical importance, the task can be monotonous and after long hours, lookouts are prone to complacency and fatigue. Fog and other low visibility conditions also greatly increase the difficulty of the task.

The Navy is expected to continue to rely on human lookouts to meet Rule 5 of The International Maritime Organization’s Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972 (COLREGs). Innovative solutions are being sought to augment and support a lookout’s ability to see, accurately characterize and track everything within range of vision, especially in conditions of low visibility, to mitigate the risks of fatigue and complacency.

Essential Outcomes

The Royal Canadian Navy is looking for innovative solutions to assist lookouts by alerting them to possible contacts for further investigation; characterizing; and tracking objects. At a minimum, proposed solutions must be capable of achieving the following essential outcomes:

• Rapidly detect visible objects on the water’s surface and in the sky within line of sight;
• Estimate the relative bearing, range, position angle, and target angle of sighted objects;
• Ability to characterize common navigational hazards (e.g. logs, containers, small boats) or other objects of interest (e.g. vessels, small aerial systems and aircraft);
• Reliably detect objects at night.

Desired Outcomes

Innovative solutions are also being sought that achieve the following additional outcomes:

• Acoustic detection, localization, and classification of above-surface objects and aircraft;
• Ability to detect and classify particular threats (e.g. presence of guns and missiles);
• In the case of multiple sightings, ability to prioritize and track objects by distance and type;
• Ability to detect objects in all weather conditions and conditions of low visibility.