Group Activity Analysis for Persistent Surveillance

To help combat terrorist and insurgent threats, the DoD is deploying persistent surveillance systems to record the activities of people and vehicles in high-risk locations. Simple observation is insufficient for real-time monitoring of the vast amounts of data collected. Automated systems are needed to rapidly screen the collected data for timely interdiction of terrorist or insurgent activity. Effective analysis is hampered by the similarity of actions of individuals posing a threat to actions of individuals pursuing a benign activity. The analysis of the activity of groups of individuals, with requirements for team coordination, can potentially increase the ability to detect larger threats against the background of normal everyday activities. APL, in collaboration with Yale University, is developing sensor-independent approaches and tools to robustly and efficiently analyze complex group activities.