Infrared Sensor Systems for Drone and Aviation Based Imaging Applications

Abstract

Designing infrared system aids commercial and military users for a plethora of applications. As the size, weight, and power (SWaP) of broadband infrared imagers decreases, their utility is exploited for aerial vehicles. Airborne systems have greater mobility and enhance the capabilities of a user when obtaining imagery. The research presented here takes radiometrically produced theoretical models and applies ground-based design techniques to the air. Pilotage, targeting, mapping, and situational awareness are all examples of infrared imaging tasks with extensive design history. The research presented focuses on designing aerial systems in these categories. A pilotage based infrared system is designed to compare the midwave and longwave infrared (IR) bands for high-voltage wires detection to avoid deadly crashes. A new targeting system implemented a novel multi-camera design approach rooted in the targeting task performance (TTP) metric to increase performance over large areas when flown on a drone platform. Calibrated imagery from the visible, near IR, shortwave IR, and extended shortwave IR are compared to find which has the highest scene contrast for mapping tasks. Lastly, a situational awareness system is designed to keep forest firefighters safe in extreme wildfire conditions by exploiting wavelength to maintain line of sight on personnel, while mapping the fire boundary in real time to avoid fatal accidents. For the pilotage, targeting, mapping and situational awareness system designs above, the theoretical models produced are compared to laboratory and field measurements. The calibrated analysis presented provides techniques to avoid biased results and fairly compare the performance of each broadband sensor system. In each case, the theory and measurement results prove that the design methods are valid to create aerial sensor systems. In each case, the sensor performance is shown to meet the design requirements and a deployable system can be created from these initial studies.