Netherlands based technology firm Aerialtronics has released a fully integrated computer vision platform with deep learning capabilities. PENSAR is a stand-alone twin sensor platform that utilizes the GPU-accelerated computing power of the NVIDIA® Jetson™ module to allow for real-time video processing.
The PENSAR integrates the new and powerful FLIR Boson thermal IR camera into a drone application with a 30x zoom Sony daylight camera in a small, light-weight platform.
This platform can revolutionize the drone landscape and dramatically change the way operators perform aerial tasks in search and rescue, inspections, documenting assets, surveying, mapping and public privacy.
During flight, PENSAR leverages deep learning networks in real-time to detect, recognize, track, classify and annotate certain objects or deviations of interest and conversely, to blur out and mask objects for privacy reasons.
Future capabilities of the PENSAR will include ability to process filtered data of interest into geo-referenced reports and push real-time notifications. This has the potential to accelerate the workflows of business operations
The platform comes with Ubuntu Linux distribution, an open-source operating system.Users can make changes to the platform to customize its capabilities for their desired needs. PENSAR is agnostic and compatible with open-source libraries like Google’s TensorFlow. This provides the user with access to deep learning methods and machine vision developers can automate dynamic decision-making systems quickly and easily.
The platform has connectivity via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and the ability to communicate via UART(Mavlink), CANbus & PWM, which can be utilized as a companion computer to most applications in drones and robotics.
The capabilities of the PENSAR platform include:
• FLIR Boson thermal IR view / Radiometric measurements 1/1 (3:2)
• Day Vision with 30x zoom (HD 1920*1080) 1/1 (16:9)
• Side by side view (vision / IR) (HD 1920*1080) 1/2 (16:9)
• Sensor fusion (IR overlay on vision image stream)
• Dual-stream parallel onboard recording
• Image capturing
• AI-powered object detection, tracking & classification
• Real-time masking
• Optical character recognition (OCR)
• GPU-accelerated computing
• Ability to run unlimited computer vision powered algorithms
Development of custom hand-coded or deep learning algorithms based on the end-user’s requirements is available upon request. Interested developers can also take advantage of NVIDIA®’s JetPack software development kit which includes access to a bustling interactive community of developers and allows users to utilize the libraries and APIs, samples and documentation needed to code and deploy their own algorithms.
You can find additional information here.
Frank Schroth is editor in chief of DroneLife, the authoritative source for news and analysis on the drone industry: it’s people, products, trends, and events.
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