Projectile identification system

The U.S. Army plans for the needs of future warfare to retain its technological superiority. Future Combat Systems (FCS) is a major effort designed to meet this need. FCS includes multiple automated fire weapons. On current systems, a human typically enters information about each projectile loaded. This is a slow process, placing the soldier and the weapon in danger. Cybernet (through funding by TACOM-ARDEC) has created a vision system that leverages multiple simple and mature image processing techniques to recognize the projectile type as it is loaded into the system's magazine. The system uses a combination of shape detection, color detection, and character identification, along with knowledge of the projectile (such as CAD model, text location, coloring, etc.) to identify the projectile. The system processes the data in real-time, allowing the soldier to load the projectiles as quickly as possible. The system has been designed with a modular recognition framework.