IARPA Awards Millions For Worldwide Image Mapping Project

This week ObjectVideo is one of several multi-million-dollar contract winners with IARPA, the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity, for investigation into a technology that will geolocate any image on a massive map of the planet. This technology will "geolocate an outdoor image or video from anywhere on the land surface of the world via the use of publicly-available information." This geolocation task will have users able to utilize open-source knowledge to locate any photo or video they've got on hand with precision – a scary yet exciting concept indeed!

The folks at ObjectVideo, Inc., are one of several to receive rewards for research, their cash sum equaling out to be $15.6 million. This contract will also include the following bits and pieces – read em and weep!

"The Finder Program aims to build on existing research systems to develop technology that augments the analyst's abilities to address the geolocation task. Technical innovations of the system will include the integration of analysts' abilities and automated geolocation technologies to solve geolocation problems; the fusion of diverse, publicly-available, but often imperfect data sources; and expansion of current automated geolocation technologies to work more efficiently and accurately over all terrains and large search areas.

If successful, Finder system will deliver a rigorously-tested technology solution for image and video geolocation tasks in any outdoor terrestrial location."

So no worries on those mirror-pics you took of your body appearing in any location searching public archives. If you're shooting embarrassing photos out at the public park, on the other hand – think twice. Stay tuned as technology in locating you from the objects in your video and photos advances very, very rapidly.

BONUS: It won't be exactly like Blade Runner, but it won't be completely different from Blade Runner either – have a peek at what's up:

[via ObjectVideo]