ARGUS IS

The ARGUS -IS or Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System is a toy in the test phase deployable aircraft from video surveillance system of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA ), the development of which the company BAE Systems has been commissioned. The contract was awarded in late 2007 with a budget of U.S. $ 18.5 million and a term of 30 months.

According to DARPA goal of the program, military users is a flexible, responsive and continuous way to find, track, and monitor activities on the ground to offer. ARGUS -IS provides military users a permanent monitoring capability of a large area ( up to 35 km ²) from heights of up to 5,000 meters, to support tactical users in a dynamic battlefield or urban environment. The three main components of the ARGUS -IS is a 1.8 gigapixel video system ( four lenses, 368 commercially available camera sensor chip with 5 megapixels), plus two processing subsystems, one in the air and the other on the floor. In contrast to previous systems, are sent directly to board the aircraft in real time processed video data and no raw data to the ground station.

The first test flight in a UH -60 Black Hawk took place in February 2010. Currently, the Boeing A160 Hummingbird is intended as a platform.