In the mid 1980's it was the height of the Cold War & DARPA was seeking was to achieve a degree of force multiplication against Soviet quantity. The conceived solution was to create autonomous land power that could be projected in a number of ways. The perceived applications revolved around
combating ground vehicles, ISR, troop replenishment, and security. In order to create these application opportunities extensive work would be required in artificial intelligence ,navigation,video,display,& image processing .DARPA created an extensive ecosystem of over one hundred contractors in both industry and academia to develop algorithms that would guide a vehicle first on a road and then off road to accomplish a variety of prescribed applications. At the time Vicom Image Processors produced by Vicom Inc. offered a capability for stand alone image processing and display. These innovative systems were easy to program and compact which allowed for embedding them into the vehicle test beds. Vicom was started by Dr. William K. Pratt, http://sipi.usc.edu/about/ , and focused on image processing technology packaged so researchers and production OEM’s could leverage the technology. The driving force behind Vicom was a great mentor and I enjoyed making sales calls with him.
A number of groups in the Eco system were seeking this type of versatility to develop their algorithms, apply artificial reasoning to guidance capability and provide storage for road following data bases.
In this environment I sold systems to groups located across the Western U.S from the likes of Hughes Research, DELCO, University of Arizona, Sandia Labs, United Technology, LMCO,Martin Marietta, AI&D’s, & TACOM.
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