SPECTRAL SCIENCES, INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF221-0002

Description

Small, unmanned aerial system platforms (SUAS) carrying intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors are becoming ubiquitous in military and intelligence operations.  Sensors may be operated frequently in hostile airspace, and therefore must be reliable and attritable, containing components with minimal maintenance and replacement cost.  Compact hyperspectral imaging (HSI) systems provide a new layer of information about material properties that aids detection and characterization of objects on the ground. Long-wave Infrared (LWIR) HSI combines the day-night operational capability of thermal imaging with the material characterization of HSI. However, the high cost, size, weight and power requirements (C-SWaP) of existing thermal HSI has prevented their adoption for attritable applications.  Spectral Sciences Inc (SSI) is developing a LWIR HSI approach that promises the low C-SWaP equivalent to standard ISR thermal imaging cameras required for attritable SUAS operation.  Further, the proposed system has performance that rivals much larger HSI systems. A prototype, SAFIRE (Superpixel Array For InfraREd), has been demonstrated. In this project, we propose new manufacturing and software processing approaches to SAFIRE.  We introduce two innovations, one in hardware, to produce rugged, mechanically stable devices, and one in software, to correct and calibrate the data and produce informative detection results.