DIF DTC Final Conference - 24-25 March 2009 |
Academics, scientists, experts and business leaders gathered this week at the Defence Academy near Shrivenham to discuss and demonstrate the technology of the future at the final annual conference of the DefenceTechnology Centre in Data and Information Fusion (DIF DTC), a £60 million partnership led by General Dynamics UK for the MoD. |
At the conference, the DIF DTC's partners, which include Cardiff University, BT, QinetiQ, Waterfall Solutions, and eight other universities, presented their year's work to academics, students, and representatives of industry and the Ministry of Defence. The Centre's three-year, £30 million Phase II contract, has allowed the team to develop key technologies and explore how these can be used in military and national security solutions for the future.
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Since 2003, successful outputs from the earlier phases of the programme have been taken forward in seven new cluster projects, aimed at providing new capabilities at a systems level. These include cutting-edge research on how to track and predict a person's intentions and behaviours using data about their physical makeup and movements, known collectively as biometrics.
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One example of this is automatic gait recognition, which uses information about the way a person walks to identify them and analyse their possible intentions.
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As well as developing sophisticated planning capabilities, the team has undertaken innovative work on how humans will interface with technology to receive and understand information in the future.
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Phase 2 of the DIF DTC also sponsored a Master of Science (MSc) course in Data & Information Fusion at Cardiff University, which resulted in a significant proportion of students being employed in UK defence, both in government and in industry.
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A number of technologies are already being exploited in MoD programmes and the civil sector, or have been tested and evaluated in Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstrations (CWID) in both 2007 and 2008, and at the Counter-Terrorism Centre. Others will provide valuable input for new MoD programmes such as Persistent Wide Area Surveillance (PWAS) High Impact
Rapid Implementation Demonstrator (HIRID) programmes, which are intended to achieve rapid pull-through of technologies to intheatre operational demonstration within three years.
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