Objective of Workshop:

The Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG), the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), and the NATO Undersea Research Centre (NURC) are sponsoring a workshop focusing on automatic classification, autonomy, and intelligent navigation (e.g. feature-based navigation), with a special focus on the underwater environment. Underwater systems rely heavily on acoustics for sensing and communication. The underwater environment, however, presents specific challenges to acoustic propagation not seen to the same extent in other operating environments, particularly highly variable propagation conditions due to bathymetry, surface conditions, internal waves, and noise. Target variability, clutter, and classifier training issues (in situ training, limited target data) are also important. The goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers from signal processing (esp. detection, classification, localization, and tracking), machine learning and computational intelligence, intelligent navigation and control of autonomous vehicles, and other relevant disciplines to:

• Review the most recent research results in these fields.
• Identify shortcomings and associated technical challenges in the performance of current approaches.
• Present new research directions that could be applied to the technical challenges.

The Workshop will consider technology applicable to all types of unmanned systems, namely UUVs, UAVs, UGVs, and USVs, as well as fixed deployed systems. We are seeking contributed presentations from active researchers in the following areas of interest:

• Automatic classification
• Clutter discrimination
• Feature identification for automatic classification
• Classifier training (in-situ training, large data sets, imbalanced training sets)
• Adaptive classification (e.g., environmental adaptation, limited resources)
• Anomaly detection
• Collision avoidance
• Feature-based tracking
• Route planning
• Sensor/platform autonomy

Download the FINAL CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Extended abstracts (1-2 pages) are invited on the above topics. Abstracts and final presentations will be published on CD for collection at the meeting. Contact the organizers if you are interested in participating:

• ONR Global:
• DSTL:

Time line:

• Deadline for conference abstract submission: 1 August 2009
• Notification of acceptance: 14 August 2009
• Deadline for registration and payment of fee: 31 August 2009
• Presentation due: 30 September 2009