Aircraft

SkEye: Billion pixel camera in the sky covers 80 square km

The airborne component of the SkEye system is the distinctive multi-eye electro optical sensor unit and an image processing computer.
Elbit Systems
The airborne component of the SkEye system is the distinctive multi-eye electro optical sensor unit and an image processing computer.
Elbit Systems

The Paris Airshow next week will see the first public showing of a breakthrough commercial avionics system. The SkEye Wide-Area Persistent Surveillance system by Isreal's Elbit Systems, stitches together numerous real-time images to offer a billion-pixel coverage of an 80 square kilometer area in real-time.

The SkEye system can be installed in light manned aircraft and large Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and has already been operated for several years by the military of at least two countries.

SkEye persistently observes and records a much wider area than conventional UAS-carried Visual Intelligence (VISINT) systems. The system's users can also choose real-time or "back in time" video footage anywhere within the covered area, and ten different areas can be analyzed in depth by different users simultaneously.

The system is made up of Electro Optic (EO) sensor, image processing and data storage units, which send data to the ground-based SkEye Control and Management Center. It can also be configured to flag specific events through a customized alert system.

Source: Elbit Systems

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8 comments
BillProctor
Does that mean 1 Pix. covers 6.4 sq.M.??
akarp
6.4 sq M? 8E+10 pixels/8E+07 = 1000 pixels per sq. meter
Bob Flint
By my calculation that would be 12.5 pixels per square meter.
eMacPaul
@akarp, not sure where you get 8E+10 pixels from. That would be 80 billion. The article indicates 1 billion, or 12.5 pixels per square meter.
Daishi
PBS Nova talked about a similar technology in their documentary "Rise of Drones" from BAE systems named ARGUS-IS that uses a bunch of mobile phone cameras. There is a pretty good demo of how it works about 30 mins in. Fascinating stuff.
Stephen N Russell
Add to all drones & manned recon planes too,. Awesome.
MQ
First public reveal, after a decade of covert use likely..
This type of system has been there in the sky for a while..
One implementation allows real time "zoom" of multiple discrete areas while still collecting complete widearea low-res video...
CAVUMark
Elbit... is that "Big Brother" in Israeli?