Brad Burns ’03 has his eye on the Olympics.
More accurately: As the technical lead overseeing the four high-resolution imaging systems – each with 13 cameras – that are monitoring the Rio games from the sky, Burns has 52 “eyes” on the Olympics.
From balloons anchored 200 meters above the ground, the Simera camera systems are providing an unprecedented level of security by viewing all activity on the ground and capturing gigabytes of data every second. The wide-area motion imagery systems allow operators to zoom in at any point and follow vehicles or people in near-real time, or backward or forward in time. With just one click on an individual, they can see where that person was a couple of hours ago and track their activities moving forward.
It’s the first time the system’s core technology has been exported for civilian use – although Burns is plenty familiar with it. As the director of engineering and science at Logos Technologies – the creator of the Simera system and its predecessor, Kestrel – he has worked with the military technology for years, mostly in Afghanistan.
Burns – who attended the Honors College and majored in physics – has certainly covered some ground over the years. We tracked him down in Rio to ask him about what he’s been up to, what he has his sights on now and how this “eye in the sky” technology might change national and domestic security forever.
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