MACS-Mar – A real-time capable multisensor remote sensing system for maritime applications: Current state of development

This article describes a new version of the Modular Airborne Camera System (MACS), which has been made especially for maritime applications. The system is a successor to a High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) MACS system which was operated in the Himalayas in 2014. Scenarios in the maritime environment require a different constellation of sensor heads, as shown in this paper. Furthermore, a method of supplying real-time capabilities to ensure flexibility in operation, as well as photogrammetric evaluation, is described. An overview of current and planned results will give an idea of the camera system´s potential. The scene to be monitored is an unchanging surface; in general, nothing but water can be seen. Every change of this condition needs to be detected and classified automatically and in real-time. To ensure this, it is necessary to have more than just a camera capturing visible light, so a thermal infrared capturing camera and a hyperspectral sensor are also used. The classification results derived onboard are sent to a ground station by radio downlink. An operator in the command and control facility is then able to use this georeferenced semantic information to decide on the next steps.