Spatially Registered Multispectral Polarimetric Sensor

Funded through several Navy programs, Technest Holdings, Inc. (formerly Genex Technologies, Inc) has successfully developed mutispectral/hyperspectral imaging sensors for long range target tracking/classification and multi-modal wide FOV (Field of View) flash detection. Leveraging this experience, Technest proposes in this SBIR Phase I effort to develop an innovative, high frame rate, multiresolution/multispectral (visible and MWIR),and spatially registered polarimetric sensor called SmartEye for fast frame rate target classification and muzzle flash detection. SmartEye has modularly designed multispectral polarimetric optics, Technest’s miniature DSP/FPGA sensor control, data processing hardware or SOS (Smart Optical Sensor), and a long life (>100K hours) cryocooler. Two other key elements of our system are the MWIR and visible foveal camera sensors. Foveal camera sensors, such as the ones from Nova Sensors, use biologically inspired multi-resolution sensing mechanisms. This is important because like human vision, foveal cameras reduce (through low resolution) the amount of irrelevant information such as unwanted background but keep high resolution imaging on the interested targets.