What are WAMI systems?
At the DSEI event last week we had a lot of interesting discussions about WAMI, what it means, what the benefits are, etc.
A brief summary about WAMI:
WAMI stands for Wide Area Motion Imaging and is an enhanced ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance & Recognition) capability, initially designed for large manned aircrafts. A WAMI systems essentially provides a "city-wide" view from the sky, at an ultra high resolution.
WAMI is not new, it was already developed in the early 2000's and later used by the US DoD. At the time, multiple sensors were needed in order achieve a large enough ground-surface of multiple square km, with small enough GSD. The smaller the Ground Sample Distance (ground pixel size), the more details you'll be able to see. However the cost price of a smaller GSD obviously is a smaller ground coverage. The only way to compensate for this is by adding more pixels.
An essential difference between a WAMI system and standard FMV (Full Motion Video) such as a stabilized gimbal with Full HD camera, is that WAMI systems do not use an optical zoom lens. While an optical zoom lens may provide a smaller GSD for a more detailed image, it also creates a NFOV (Narrow Field Of View) making you loose the "situational awareness". A WAMI system always maintains the Wide FOV and at the same time provides a high level of details of the entire area.
The advantage of a WAMI systems is that it allow for a faster and much more efficient ground coverage, while flying higher and safer. There are numerous applications for WAMI, think of:
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A WAMI systems is perfectly complementary to an existing FMV (HD Zoom) system. For instance, when you identify a suspicious vehicle, you can use the geo-refenced coordinates from the WAMI system, to zoom-in on the vehicle and follow it with the FMV (Slew-to-Cue). At the same time you continue to record the entire overview with the WAMI, making sure you don't miss other potential threats. And if you want to know where the vehicle came from, you can look at the stored images from the WAMI system.
Fortunately, due to recent CMOS sensor innovations, ultra-high resolution sensors became available at a much more affordable price. At Phase One, we work closely together with the leading sensor manufacturers and therefore have early access to the latest generation and best-in-class "medium & large format" sensors. At the moment we provide single camera payloads up to 150 MP, in a very small package of approx. 9 x 9 cm, weighing not more then 1100 grams (incl. lens). This is about 75x the resolution of a Full HD camera. Our larger iXM-RS280F, even provides 140x the resolution of a Full HD camera! For a more detailed overview of the Phase One cameras go to: Aerial Cameras - Industrial Cameras, Controller and Lenses (phaseone.com)
This makes full WAMI systems not only available anymore for large manned aircrafts, but already from small tactical and MALE UAS as well. This makes the overall cost of your ISR mission, many times more efficient and cost effective.
At Phase One we are democratizing WAMI!
If you like to learn more, or would like to see more specific sample images, just let us know.