R&D Activities
Additess LTD is a scientific, consulting and research company, whose purpose is to conduct theoretical and applied research and to produce studies, in strategic and tactical levels. It covers issues concerning security policies, aftermath on crisis events, emergency management situations, critical infrastructure protection, transportation security and border management (monitoring and surveillance), state-of-the-art modeling solutions and monitoring equipment for border security.
Main Research Fields
Automated motion detection from space in sea surveilliance
The Panchromatic Remote-sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping (PRISM) carried by the Advanced Land-Observing Satellite (ALOS) was designed to generate worldwide topographic data with its high-resolution and stereoscopic observation. PRISM performs along-track (AT) triplet stereo observations using independent forward (FWD), nadir (NDR), and backward (BWD) panchromatic optical line sensors of 2.5m ground resolution in swaths 35 km wide. The FWD and BWD sensors are arranged at an inclination of ±23.8◦ from NDR.
In our research in Additess, PRISM images are used under a new perspective, in the security domain for sea surveillance, based on the sequence of the triplet which is acquired in a time interval of 90 sec (45 sec between images). An automated motion detection algorithm is developed allowing the combination of information collected at each instant and therefore the identification of patterns and trajectories of moving objects on the sea; including the extraction of geometric characteristics along with the speed of movement and direction. The developed methodology combines well established image segmentation and morphological operation techniques for the detection of objects. Each object in the scene is represented by unit invariant properties and maintained in a database to allow the generation of trajectories as these arise over time, while the location of moving objects is updated based on the result of neighbourhood calculations.
During the last thirty years Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) systems have evolved into highly capable machines, used by the armed forces worldwide, mostly for surveillance and data acquisition purposes. Additess believe that the demand for these products in the commercial industry arises from the low manufacturing and operational costs of the systems, the flexibility of the aircrafts to adjust to the particular needs of the consumer and the elimination of the risk of human lives (pilots) in difficult missions. Still, introducing this technology into a commercial marketplace is a problem associated with many difficulties since there are many reliability and airworthiness issues waiting to be solved.
Additess has developed during research and design phases a variety of UAV systems, a new concept in UAV market: designed from existing COTS platforms, in order to minimize the development cost.
Transport infrastructures are a key asset for development in any country. Therefore, efficient traffic monitoring and control services are required to manage the following. In this direction, we are using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for traffic monitoring and analysis.
Research on UAV Video Analytics
- Extracting Kinematic Characteristics (Trajectories, Speeds, Accelerations etc.) for Vehicles and Pedestrians from UAV video footage
- Creating O/D tables at intersections, arterials or roundabout
- Creating O/D tables for Pedestrians
The Web databases, and other digitized information storehouses,, contain a growing volume of audio content. Users and stakeholders want to make the most of this material by searching and indexing the digitized audio content. In the past, companies had to create and manually analyze written transcripts of audio content because using computers to recognize, interpret, and analyze digitized content was difficult. The development of faster microprocessors, large storage capacities and better speech recognition algorithms has made audio mining easier.
In Additess, we work towards the development of algorithms that enable users to identify events/words/phrases of interests aiding in increasing efficiency and productivity. Our approach to the solution of problems is the provision of individualized solutions for each particular problem by combining practices and principles from the fields of digital signal processing, audio coding, speech recognition, audio mining and statistical learning.
We assess the effectiveness of our research solutions by utilizing accepted and established standards. We target practical solutions and aim their integration with existing Additess products or cots for the production of outcomes that go beyond the proof of concept/technology.
In the hands of experts, machine learning is a powerful tool which can be used for data analytics, pattern recognition, and prediction. Additess scientists use state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms and successfully apply them to diverse fields, turning raw data into valuable information, and most importantly into insight and understanding. Big data analytics has become essential practice for modern businesses as it uncovers knowledge which is otherwise concealed in vast collections of data. Data mining and machine learning can be used to discover anomalies, enhance productivity, maximize efficiency, and to forecast opportunities.
A transition from the ‘intelligent design’ approach, which currently rules software engineering to meta-design approaches as well as self-combining software systems emerges from the fact that the “Future Internet” software will be the critical infrastructure on which all other critical infrastructures will depend. The technological developments that are realized are changing the dynamics of the software industry and posing new requirements and opportunities for improving Europe’s competitive position in software.
Our approaches take into account the inability of software engineers to foresee all possible situations that systems, connected to the open physical world, have to face. Therefore, we focus on the design of software components that have the ability to collaborate in an autonomous and decentralized fashion. Furthermore, the deployment of systems and optimisation platforms that take advantage of the emerging programmability of the underlying infrastructure is also of interest for the design of infrastructural-agnostic applications.
Our research relies on the design and development of novel reactive software development paradigms for concurrent and highly distributed applications as well as the design and development of holistic applications’ deployment and management frameworks over programmable infrastructures.
