Dr. Steven Blask, senior software engineer, Jigsaw Program Harris Corp. provided this overview:

"Jigsaw is a program, that was first funded, in part, by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2001 to determine if a system could be built that could use LADAR to image targets under trees. The term Jigsaw was considered an apt title because this technique takes advantage of the tiny little holes that cause light to speckle down on the ground under the tree canopy. As the aircraft moves over the trees, little pieces of the target are picked up, thereby enabling the LADAR to see through the gaps in the leaves of the trees. The job of the system then, is to take all these little measurements, that are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and put them together to form the target."

The ability to reliably identify targets—tanks and other vehicles—hidden under foliage and camouflage was first successfully demonstrated by Harris and MIT-Lincoln Laboratories (MIT-LL) during an earlier Jigsaw study. This demonstration was followed by the recently completed initiative to design a smaller, lighter, autonomous, yet better-performing test bed system suitable for use on a medium-sized UAV.

During the latest phase of this effort, Harris is providing systems integration services in cooperation with MIT-LL and Dragonfly Pictures Inc. In addition, the U.S. Army Research Development & Engineering Command (RDECOM) is providing test range services and UH-1 helicopter support for early flight testing; Sarnoff Corporation is providing sophisticated 3-D image registration algorithms, and L3Com/Wescam, a small, high-performance turret.

RSS    Save to Del.icio.us  Digg This