R&D 100 winner of the day: Tracktable

Previous methods for analyzing trajectories were focused on complex one-to-one geometric comparisons using curve alignment. This limited both the type and number of trajectories that could be analyzed. Sandia National Laboratory developed, Tracktable’s patented representation techniques dramatically increase this limit from hours or days of data to many years. This enables analysis of patterns of activity that aren’t even visible with previous approaches. Moreover, Tracktable’s expressive analysis capability helps the computer identify things worth users’ attention instead of requiring them to forage through a mountain of noise in the hope of finding scarce signals. In addition to national security applications, we have applied Tracktable to the problem of eye tracking: where is the user’s gaze focused on a screen? The shapes of gaze patterns respond to the same sorts of analysis as moving objects. Tracktable applies in any field where motion data is common. With GPS data now ubiquitous, this includes wildlife tracking, traffic analysis, airspace management and even comparing runners’ daily meanderings. Tracktable’s expressive power and scalability provide the next generation of capability for trajectory analysis applications.