Gorgon Stare

"Gorgon stare" redirects here. For uses related to Greek mythology, see Gorgon.

Gorgon Stare is the name given to a new video capture technology developed by the United States military. It is a spherical array of nine cameras attached to an aerial drone.^[1] Gorgon (such as Medusa) is a terrifying monster from Greek mythology with living snakes for hair. The reference is presumably to the multiple eyes (multiple cameras) and the danger it posed to gaze upon a Gorgon.

The system is capable of capturing video of an entire city, can then be analyzed by humans or an artificial intelligence, such as the Mind's Eye project being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Gorgon Stare needs to utilize a system of tagging and metadata to be fully effective.^[2][3][4] The Air Force plans to deliver one system in 2011, another in 2012, and a third in 2014, though they will not enter service until accepted by the commander in the theatre of operations.^[5]

A similar system is planned to be installed on the Blue Devil blimp, a spy blimp developed for the US Air Force.^[6]

In January 2011, it was announced that the program wasn't performing to expectations, and included faults such as "a large black triangle moving throughout the image," due to failure to combine the images taken by the multiple cameras, inferior image quality compared to older systems, a problematic night-vision system, inability to track people on the surface, and delays of up to eighteen seconds in sending data to the ground.^[5] In response, the Air Force said that several of the flaws had been fixed since the report detailing the issues had been written, that the system was never designed to offer high-resolution imagery over a wide area, and that in some areas the testing was "not sufficiently constructed to objectively evaluate the capabilities of the system," according to an anonymous source involved with the program.^[7]

See also

• ARGUS-IS

Reference list

1. ^ View all comments that have been posted about this article. (2011-01-02). "With Air Force's Gorgon Drone 'we can see everything'". Washingtonpost.com. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/01/AR2011010102690_pf.html. Retrieved 2011-01-22. 
2. ^ "Pentagon to adopt NFL's instant replay technology". CSMonitor.com. 2010-06-02. http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0602/Pentagon-to-adopt-NFL-s-instant-replay-technology. Retrieved 2011-01-22. 
3. ^ "Gorgon Stare Broadens UAV Surveillance". Aviationweek.com. http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/jsp_includes/articlePrint.jsp?storyID=news/dti/2010/11/01/DT_11_01_2010_p30-261179.xml&headLine=Gorgon%20Stare%20Broadens%20UAV%20Surveillance. Retrieved 2011-01-22. 
4. ^ "Computers That See You and Keep Watch Over You". The New York Times. 1 January 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/science/02see.html. Retrieved 22 January 2011. 
5. ^ ^{a b} "Gorgon Stare tests reveal long list of problems". Flightglobal.com. 25 January 2011. http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/01/25/352261/gorgon-stare-tests-reveal-long-list-of-problems.html. Retrieved 1 February 2011. 
6. ^ "All-Seeing Blimp Could Be Afghanistan’s Biggest Brain". Wired Magazine. 18 January 2011. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01/all-seeing-blimp/. Retrieved 22 January 2011. 
7. ^ "Our ‘All-Seeing Eye’ Sees Just Fine, Air Force Insists". Wired Magazine. 25 January 2011. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01/all-seeing-eye-can-see-just-fine-air-force-insists/. Retrieved 1 February 2011.