The National Institute of Standards and Technology has added new images for drone investigation uses in Computer Forensic Reference Datasets.

The agency said Tuesday it added a new drone-dedicated CFReDS section that contains visual evidence and guides on a number of popular drone models that may be used for criminal activity.

“The drone images will allow investigators to do a dry run before working on high-profile cases,” said Barbara Guttman, manager of digital forensic research at NIST.

Colorado-based digital forensics firm VTO Labs developed the images under a contract with the Department of Homeland Security.

“The forensic images contain all the ones and zeroes we recovered from each model,” said Steve Watson, chief technology officer at VTO.

The company constructed the images based on industry standard data formats and included step-by-step photo-illustrated teardown instructions with each visual.

Watson uncovered serial numbers, flight paths, launch and landing locations, photos, videos and even credit card information during tests.

The images function to help forensics practitioners in recovering data, university laboratories in training and testing efforts and software developers in evaluating applications.

The U.S. Army has kicked off a competitive program for industry participants to prototype a system to help increase the performance of military personnel and equipment.

Increment 1 of the Ultra-Lightweight Camouflage Net System will be designed to offer multispectral protection against sensor threats and replace camouflage variants that were developed in the 1990s, the Army said Monday.

The service branch selected three potential suppliers to conduct work under the engineering manufacturing development phase of the ULCANS program.

“We are executing a development and fielding strategy to ensure camouflage is made available as quickly as possible to units with the most pressing operational needs,” said Col. Frank Moore, a product manager at the Army.

The prototyping effort will run for six months and the service branch plans to choose a system for final development and test by 2019 fiscal year’s first quarter.

Low-rate initial production is scheduled to commence in the third quarter of FY 2019.

The U.S. Navy‘s Office of Naval Research will collaborate with Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science to develop an autonomous unmanned marine vehicle intended for coastal security operations.

FAU will conduct a five-year research project that aims to produce unmanned surface vehicles that would function as base ships for smaller unmanned underwater and aerial vehicles as part of a $1.25 million grant from ONR, the university said May 23.

Manhar Dhanak, an FAU professor, will lead a team to create tools for multi-sensor perception; collision avoidance; simultaneous localization and mapping; and improved low-level control in austere weather.

The university noted that a SLAM algorithm will offer a situational awareness world map designed to manage the USV’s navigation and route planning functions.

Dhanak’s team will consist of engineers, a post-doctoral associate and students from SeaTech - The Institute for Ocean and Systems Engineering under FAU’s Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering.

Resulting vehicles effort could aid in coastal surveillance operations and training for ocean engineering students, the university added.

The team will work with the university’s Naval Engineering Education Consortium program that uses UUVs to detect objects situated on the bottom of the ocean.