Press Release : New SAR detector
PARIS, May 6th, 2024 – Preligens, a global leader in Geospatial Artificial Intelligence for Aerospace, Defense and Government applications, today announced the launch of its new AI/ML algorithms optimized to detect and classify aircraft and vessels on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite images. These innovative detectors combine Preligens’ cutting-edge know-how in electro-optical (EO) imagery analytics with new SAR analytics capabilities, redefining the state-of-the-art of AI analytics for the defense and intelligence community.
Combining AI analytics on EO and SAR images to enable 24/7 all-weather monitoring
Preligens AI detectors on EO satellite imagery are world-renowned for their performance and robustness against challenging environmental conditions, objects obstruction or deterioration, or diversity of data sources (image providers, resolution, NADIR angle). The new SAR analytics capabilities are built on this legacy to enable unparalleled 24/7 all-weather analytics solutions. Beyond offering high-performance, data-agnostic SAR detectors, Preligens will advance its state-of-the-art vision AI technology to fully leverage the complementarities between SAR and EO images, matching the best practices and needs of the defense and intelligence community. The combination of the most performing AI detectors on EO with these new AI detectors on SAR will empower GEOINT analysts with a full operating picture anytime, anywhere, in any weather condition.
“All the customers who appreciate the performance of our EO detectors in real operations have expressed the need for the complementary 24/7 all-weather monitoring capabilities offered by SAR imagery. Since optical images are more intuitive and always used as a reference by our users, we have decided to approach SAR analytics by combining in innovative ways the information contained in EO and SAR images. This announcement underscores our commitment to pushing the boundaries of innovation in geospatial artificial intelligence and our dedication to bringing our clients the best performing solutions.” said Jean-Yves Courtois, CEO of Preligens.
An operational aircraft detector
As a first step in an ambitious EO+SAR AI analytics roadmap, Preligens releases a first aircraft detector able to detect all aircraft on high resolution SAR images. Demonstrating already great performance, Preligens will continue to enhance and refine the detector with plans to incorporate aircraft classification and more features in the near future. In addition to this aircraft detector, a lineup of other detectors are currently being developed with a vessel detector to be released by the end of year.
The aircraft detector was developed after Preligens joined Capella’s Analytics Partner Program in order to accelerate the development of its new SAR analytics solutions by getting primary access to large volumes of high-quality archive data, which is key for developing robust AI analytics. As a Certified Partner, Preligens also gets access to Capella’s tasking capabilities to validate and demonstrate the new SAR detectors on data that is timely and relevant to the worldwide defense and intelligence users.
Preligens intends to forge other partnerships with the leading commercial SAR data providers, in order to deliver its landmark data-agnostic best-in-class performance to its users.
