US Spends $11M To Kick-Start Video Search 67
coondoggie writes "The US military is inundated with video from airborne unmanned aircraft, remote monitoring systems and security outposts. In an effort to speed up the processing and analyzing of all this video, researchers at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) this week awarded an almost $11 million contract to open source software vendor Kitware to help develop what DARPA calls its Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool (VIRAT) program."
Are they really that Open? (Score:1, Interesting)
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In case you didn't know, kitware's clients already include Sandia labs, and various other agencies.
They still keep the core products (VTK, ITK, CMake, etc) open, but will build custom solutions on top of them for clients.
The gift in question isn't really that much different from their usual work...
lulz, acronyms (Score:3, Funny)
ATGTGAATTPRTSOIC*
*Are they going to give an acronym to the people running the software once it's complete?
Re:lulz, acronyms (Score:5, Funny)
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not enough money (Score:2, Interesting)
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It's a DARPA project, they are almost by definition proof of concept, ten years out, 'most likely won't work this time around (but hey, wouldn't it be cool if it did?)' type projects that are designed to get the ball rolling on technology that might be possible to implement today. No one in charge of this project is expecting to roll it out into combat situations next year, they just want to see what a bit of money thrown at the problem comes up with; they literally don't even care if it's successful or no
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It's an insult for the military to be using tax dollars to work on developing Computer Vision technology 20 years ahead of it's time when we're up against record unemployment.
"It's an insult for DARPA to create jobs at Kitware during 'record unemployment' that isn't actually record unemployment, just high unemployment."
-AC
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Re:not enough money (Score:4, Interesting)
Unemployment is typically measured as a percentage, not as a raw number, since the relative scale of unemployment is of real importance, not just how many people. 500k people unemployed in the US is amazingly low, but that number would be crippling to Bulgaria.
But, assuming we're using the raw, non-standard measure, unemployment peaked at around 22.5% during the depression, a lowish estimate. 123m * 21.5% = 27.67m
We currently have 9.5% unemployment (July 2010). 281m * 9.5% = 26.695m
Considering official depression-era unemployment statistics don't exist, that's an estimate up there, so the number could be decently different. I also didn't do any research into census numbers; I'm assuming yours are accurate.
It turns out manual labor is not a growth industry (Score:2)
Plus we haven't got any WPA style programs going to help those out of work earn their keep
It turns out manual labor is not a growth industry.
Most of the WPA and similar projects built too well, and they are still around and in active use. FDR's "alphabet soup" of the depression era "New Deal" was predominantly manual labor, and did things (the CCC) like turning 84,400,000 of wetlands into farmland . Other major agencies were the PWA, CWA, and TVA. We're currently tearing down a number of PWA dams because of their threat to salmon breeding. The CWA cost $1B over the 5 months it existed (that'
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Brilliant insight asshole. Lets hire 1000 skilled laborers to spend 10 years on speculative R&D which may or may not bear fruit.
Quite frankly, who gives a shit if it bears fruit? Every bit of R&D ever done has been done under the pretense that there's the possibility of the project failing, whether it's a very likely chance during research, or a moderately to slightly likely chance during development.
1000 people definitively employed for 10 years, or 1000 people who may or may not get a job in the next 10 years. Your pick.
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Are you against all progress, or just in this particular instance? Because you sound like you'd be arguing against developing tractors because they'd take away jobs from farmers.
Or developing steam ships because you wouldn't need as many sailors.
Or wheels because they'd take away the jobs of litter-bearers.
Or fire because you wouldn't need lots of p
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Problem 1: security clearances. Much of this information is classified, and some of it deservedly so. The more low-skilled people you have looking at it, the more likely you'll have leaks and other problems.
Problem 2: the job is probably harder than you think. Many people will give suboptimal results due to laziness or ineptitude. You have to train people, somehow test they're still performing well, give incentives, weed out the bad ones, and all the HR type stuff as well.
Problem 3: it's a tedious and borin
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Just ask your boss if you can have 0.48% of the company's budget for high risk, high payoff projects (DARPA gets $3.2 billion of the military's $660 billion budget) . I'd be willing to bet that most engineering places put more than that into advanced prototyping and proof of concept designs as it is. Doesn't seem so bad when you put it that way does it?
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I actually laughed out loud when I read $11m. All I could picture was Dr. Evil...."11 MIIIIILION Dollars"...then a bunch of people laughing.
Seriously, my crew of 4 costs the government 10 times that amount for glorified PowerPoint training slides.
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I have seen those videos... (Score:1, Funny)
DarpaVid Search: "Brown People" (showing 10 out of approx. 1,342,400,000 video results)
DarpaVid Search: "Brown People +terrorist" (showing 10 out of approx. 2,670,000 video results)
DarpaVid Search: "Brown People +terrorist +diabetic +tall" (showing 10 out of approx. 4,000 video results)
DarpaVid Search: "Brown People +terrorist +diabetic +tall +scratchybeard +inexplicablycleanclothes" (showing 1 out of 1 video result)
AHA! WE GOT HIM!
Great, another privacy kill (Score:1, Insightful)
Once someone comes up witha way to automate the scanning of all that video, then our privacy will always be gone, as opposed to simply invaded after a crime is committed.
Might have another intended use (Score:2)
...like flagging videos of egregious and potentially embarrassing acts withing military archives...
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If the police weren't allowed some measure of invasion of privacy, no crime would ever be solved, as even a full confession could be judged to be self-invasion.
I suspect google is already doing a lot of this (Score:2)
Security camera firms have similar issue. My grocery store has over 50 cameras because they are so cheap. But I doubt they have the eyeballs to view a small fraction of it.
Re:I suspect google is already doing a lot of this (Score:5, Informative)
I'm just guessing, but I have worked a little bit with security feed monitoring software before. Most likely they have 4-8 key cameras (on the registers and liquor department) which are shown 2-4 at a time and rotated through to watch for actual theft or violent behavior. Around these, they will have a number (10+) of lower priority feeds being displayed scaled down and rotated through more slowly which basically only serve the purpose of watching for weird, suspicious behavior.
The rest of the feeds probably aren't even watched but digital storage is cheap these days, it's pretty trivial to keep a decent quality recording even of 50 feeds for the past day or so, with a simple panic button to prevent deletion if something happens. Depending on how elaborate the system is, there might also be a way to flag feeds that meet certain criteria and display them in the main displays with an alert. Things like motion in what should be an empty stockroom, people moving backwards through the registers, fire doors opening, etc.
Of course, the even more likely answer to the issue of having 50 'cameras' and no one to watch them is that there are really only 5 cameras and 45 opaque plastic domes that look like cameras. That is the solution that the vast majority of stores choose to go with.
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Kitware? (Score:1, Troll)
That company is not truly open source. The only thing they do distribute is VTK (which is only a library under a BSD license) but programs that are actually useful without being a programmer (as most researchers that use this stuff are not programmers) are under a more restrictive license. It's similar to saying Mac OS X is open source because the kernel is open or Windows is open source because BIND and the TCP stack is derived from BSD. They use the open source label to get the community to fix their pro
Re:Kitware? (Score:5, Informative)
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Open source != "I don't like it".
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They have other things. MIDAS, for example, is really spiffy and under a BSD-ish license, and is probably part of why they got this contract:
http://www.kitware.com/MIDAS/resources/software.html [kitware.com]
"MIDAS integrates multimedia server technology with Kitware's open-source data analysis and visualization clients. The server follows open standards for data storage, access and harvesting. MIDAS has been optimized for storing massive collections of scientific data and related metadata and reports. MIDA
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Oops, the first and third Google groups links are swapped. I didn't check those URLs carefully enough before posting. Dang, there goes my chance to impress them as a careful programmer. :-)
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And of course, as I posted elsewhere in this discussion, the whole project itself is still pretty ironic: ... Still, we must accept that there is nothing wrong with wanting some security. The issue is how
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html [pdfernhout.net]
"Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?
been here before (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, 11mil is not gonna cut it.
On the irony of military robotics... (Score:2)
My comments: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html [pdfernhout.net]
"... Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of a
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At this point I'm pretty sure that one day geneticists will discover that there is a gene for irony which at least half of our population lacks. :(
Slashdot reaches new degree of separation from new (Score:5, Informative)
We are sitting here commenting on a Slashdot blog post, which links to a Techdirt blog post, which links to a blogs.journalism.co.uk blog post, which links to this news article [nytimes.com].
I skipped the blogs and read the article.
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You should have read the Slashdot post too, since your news article refers to this post [slashdot.org] instead of the current one.
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We are sitting here commenting on a Slashdot blog post, which links to a Techdirt blog post, which links to a blogs.journalism.co.uk blog post, which links to this news article [nytimes.com].
I skipped the blogs and read the article.
Whoops! :/
That link is related to the recent Wikileaks/Shield Law post. Try this one instead: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/01/darpa_vid_search_dough/ [theregister.co.uk]
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Did I get a +5 for making a mistake and posting to the wrong article? Jeez, we often complain about moderation around here, but usually bad mods mod me down, not up. Mod me -1, Not Paying Attention!
Thanks anyway mods!
Why not outsource that job? (Score:1, Offtopic)
I'm betting Wikileaks would do it for free!
Telescreens are coming to your city (Score:1)
Will it involve multitouch screens? (Score:2)
Lost opportunity... (Score:2)
They _could_ have called it the Bitchin' Optical Retrieval and Analysis Tool (BORAT).
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uses... (Score:1)
>The US military is inundated with video from airborne unmanned aircraft, remote monitoring systems and security outposts
I am wondering if they could just use a better detection system for WHEN they should start filming. A motion sensor is just a first step into limiting the amount coming in, as well, you do not need to have any video when there is nothing there, only when something is happening....with maybe a 15 second pre cache so that once motion hits, you get the 15 seconds before that event... most
And when having a acceptable level of accuracy... (Score:2)
it will be handed over to the MPAA/NSA media "protection" branch, to help them perform their internet "police actions" against those filthy movie pirates sailing the digital seas. I expect a certain vice president to declare war on media piracy soon, as is agreed on in the election funding "agreement" between the current US president and MPAA.