Compound Eye Spectral Imager

To meet the DARPA need and fill a critical capabilities gap in multispectral target/anomaly detection from small UAV/MAV platforms, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to advance the development of the new Compound Eye Spectral Imager (CESI) system that was demonstrated to be feasible in Phase I. CESI is based on a highly innovative biomimetic compound-eye micro-optical assembly, a CMOS imaging sensor, embedded image processing hardware, and multispectral data reduction/compression firmware. The TRL-4 Phase I CESI prototype has already demonstrated the capability to detect TNT residue in real time while meeting SWAP requirements. The Phase I prototype achieves wide field-of-view (>45 degrees), real-time multispectral imaging across six spectral channels in 0.1cc and 60 degrees. Embedded image processing hardware will be fabricated, and the multispectral firmware will be ported and optimized. Additionally, we will integrate spectral algorithms enabling CESI to support both hyperspectral and multispectral capabilities, thereby increasing target detection/identification probabilities.