High-Tech Specs to Spot Terrorists?

May 28, 2003 -- If U.S. troops in Iraq want to spot Saddam Hussein, his sons or any of the former regime officials still wanted by coalition forces, for now they'll have to rely on a clever deck of playing cards.

But one day, rather than constantly referring to modified playing cards or old-fashioned "wanted posters," U.S. soldiers may be able to pick out the bad guys in a crowd just by looking through a pair of high-tech glasses.

For years, the Department of Defense has been funding the development of small computers and digital systems to enhance a soldier's visual capabilities on the battlefield. But researchers may have a system that could be put to use soon — if the Pentagon decides to continue funding the project, that is.

Called the Digital MP, and developed at the U.S. Army's Soldier System Center in Natick, Mass., along with various tech companies, it's a small, wearable computer system designed to act as a mobile security system for military police officers, or MPs.

Mobile Processors for Military Police

The Digital MP is a commercially available, portable computer that uses nothing more than a slightly modified version of Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system — software commonly used on desktop PCs.

But at the heart of the system is an eyeglass-mounted camera and display system developed by MicroOptical Corp. in Westwood, Mass. The camera monitors what the soldier or MP sees, then feeds the images back to the belt-mounted computer.

The computer then scans the images for faces by using software developed by Identix Corp., formerly Visionics, in Jersey City, N.J. The company's software uses the same basic facial-recognition engine installed in Ybor City, Fla., more than two years ago to help spot criminals in public spaces.

The software is keyed to spot common facial features, such as the distance between a person's eyes and the corners of the mouth. Once those points are mapped, they can be compared mathematically to other faces — say, a digitized book of mug shots of most-wanted terrorists — stored in the computer.

An Eyeful of Data

As the computer comes up with matches, the images are sent back to the tiny display device on the glasses. Although the actual display is less than half an inch, it produces images that appear to the soldier as large as a standard computer monitor.

Noa Rensing, a senior scientist with MicroOptics, says the company's display screen was one of the key components that helped bring the soldier system closer to practical reality.

"In earlier tests, we had larger displays that produced larger views, but they were heavier," says Rensing. "[They also] interfered with the soldier's situational awareness."

But since the new generation of mounted displays is much smaller, the data projected in front of the soldier's eye is a lot less intrusive and allows the wearer to still see his or her surroundings.

Powerful Peacekeeping Tool?

Mark Chandler, a technologist with the Natick Soldier System Center, says the Digital MP system has come a long way conceptually as well.

Initially, the system was designed to help U.S. soldiers in Bosnia. "We built [the system] for tactical military checkpoints, for refugee control," says Chandler. "We had guys running around out there and soldiers not knowing if they were friend or foe."

The earlier system, with its bulkier components, had very limited lab trials — mainly because the batteries wouldn't last more than a few hours of use. But for the past few years, researchers worked to solve those power issues. Now, Chandler and Rensing express confidence the bugs have been worked out.

What's more, they've developed a much more capable system. For instance, with Wi-Fi, a wireless networking scheme popular in portable consumer computers, Digital MPs can share information, pictures and videos among similar units in a soldier's squad.

Research, Funding Still Needed

Also, language translation software, currently in development by researchers, could ease communications between soldiers and the foreign nationals they may need to interact with.

"If I come in [to a foreign land] as a peacekeeper, I want to know where my buddies are, I want to use the facial-recognition program to know who you are, and then I want language translation so I can talk to you," says Chandler. "It's all doable."

But Chandler admits it will still take some research work — and further funding — to get Digital MPs fully up to speed. Limited tests of the facial-recognition feature, for example, still shows the units have a hard time picking out faces in bright, sunny conditions.

And while past research has been funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research, moving forward with the program will require deeper commitments from the Defense Department, says Chandler.

He hopes a successful demonstration of a solid Digital MP prototype later this year could help loosen the Pentagon's purse-strings.