Irvine Sensors Corporation — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: US Military forces have extensively deployed image intensification devices for night-time

Description

US Military forces have extensively deployed image intensification devices for night-time and low light operations. The most common of these devices is the Night Vision Goggle (NVG) seen in both monocular and binocular version as fielded in the AN/PVS-7, -14, -15, and -18, along with the AN/PVS-23. NVGs excel at providing the operator with visibility in the visible through near-infrared spectrums in extremely low-light conditions. The difficulty occurs when there is no light (deep night or when operations occur in valleys, caves, and buildings). NVGs cannot provide the operator with good situational awareness in those instances. A novel approach has been developed and exploited by Irvine Sensors Corporation (ISC8) and its partner OPTICS 1 (Westlake California). The development of a Clip-On Thermal Imager (COTI) utilizing a 320 x 240 pixel VOx micro bolometer is currently in production, and has shown to address these issues. Additional improvement path has been identified for the current COTI approach. In this case, ISC8 plans to show the required changes to the COTI systems to allow the use of the thermal overlay approach on systems that have other than Unity gain from an optical perspective. All current COTI systems are mounted to I2 devices that have no magnification. One could postulate that the use of a COTI on devices that may not be I2 devices that as well have either a non-unity magnification, or even more effectively a zoom capability. This would allow the use of the COTI device on a new candidate class of devices including rifle scopes, binoculars, and cameras. The purpose of this Phase 1 program will be to perform the analyses and trade-offs required to determine the viability of adding a Clip On Thermal capability to other non-I2 devices, including binoculars, scopes, and cameras.