ADVANCED SYSTEMS & TECHNOLOGIES INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A10-023

Description

Unmanned air and ground vehicles (UAV and UGV) are critical in all aspects of military strategy including tactical strikes, surveillance, and even facilities management. While vehicle technology has advanced quickly, the weak link is the single-view fixed-sensor user interface. Intuitive head-tracking technology needs to be developed which is un-tethered, low latency, and allows multi-viewer expansion. In response to this need, IS&T proposes the Low Latency Infrared Positional Operating Projection (LOLIPOP) system to provide a highly scalable, yet precise, multi-user area tracking method. The LOLIPOP system consists a series of very high-speed near-infrared (NIR) Deformable Mirror Device (DMD) projectors providing overlapping volumetric views. Each projector is driven with a sequence of binary images which encode the position of each pixel within the sensor image. Each entity is equipped with a set of high-speed IR sensors to receive the pixel position information within the overlapping projection area. These are then relayed to the tracking system which triangulates the 3D position of the view within the operating volume. The low latency projectors may be reprogrammed at high speed while projecting, allowing the patterns and coverage of the projectors to adapt on the fly to occlusion, sensor density and required sampling rate.