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.