EOvideo product Exploitation Platform (VANTAGE)

Capturing video from Earth Observation (EO) is one of the most exciting innovations to hit the remote sensing world in recent times. High-resolution, full-colour EO video is enabling fundamental and disruptive changes for the Geospatial Intelligence and Earth Observation industries. EO Video provides several advantages over still imagery, for example:

• it enables faster and more accurate object recognition using AI and machine learning;
• It enables 3D models to be created to much higher precision than from a single stereo pair;
• It provides more contextual information to analysts and researchers, by capturing movement;
• It allows for more accurate change detection including detection of 3D changes over time;
• It provides the ability to mitigate patchy cloud and haze in a scene to derive a clear image.

VANTAGE is a new, online, cloud-based platform for analysis and exploitation of video from space. The VANTAGE platform includes a repository of high-definition videos captured from Earth orbiting satellites – including data from the Earth-i Vivid-X2 satellite that was launched in 2018. Alongside this data is a suite of sophisticated analytical tools, enabling a user to extract value and insight from the videos such as derivation of 3D models, tracking of moving objects in the videos, extraction of movement vectors and building up cloud-free composite images. The VANTAGE platform also connects to complementary external data sources and enables development of commercial, scientific and public sector applications. VANTAGE enables a user to bring their own EO data as well as their own user-defined workflows and processing algorithms to be deployed and used alongside the predefined list of services and functions.

VANTAGE is being developed by Earth-i and CGI under a two-year contract with the European Space Agency, which kicked off in March 2020. The project launched the first version of the platform in November 2020 and will deploy incremental releases of functionality every four months focusing on pre-defined use cases such as earthworks monitoring, deforestation and seaport analytics.

The existing VANTAGE services include:

• Vessel Detection – an AI algorithm to detect and count vessels in satellite video.
• Motion Tracking – an AI algorithm to track velocity and direction of moving objects, such as aircraft and shipping vessels.
• Cloud-Free Compositing – an AI algorithm to composite multiple video frames segment the clouds and then removes them to create a cloud-free satellite image.
• Video Stabilisation – an AI algorithm to stabilise video by aligning each video frame.
• Frame Extraction – an algorithm to break the video down into individual images for 2D image processing.
• Video Generation – an algorithm to take multiple 2D images and build it back up into a video, as well as transcoding videos into different formats (e.g. H.264, H.265, MPEG and Motion JPEG).
• 3D Model Creation – The VANTAGE platform computes a 3D model of the satellite scene and outputs it as a Mesh, DSM and Point Cloud.
• 3D Volumetric Change Detection Reporting – The VANTAGE platform undertakes change detection between two pre-processed 3D models to map cut and fill regions and report on the volumetric changes detected.

Additional features and algorithms will be added to the platform in future releases.