A Single-Chip, Zero-Latency, Deblurring Anisoplanaticism Corrector for Army Video Applications

We propose to develop a single-chip, zero-latency, video processor that (1) stabilizes the image and removes anisoplanaticism effects, (2)simultaneously removes blur caused by higher-order seeing effects and increases resolution by typically 1.5-2 times, (3) uses spatially adaptive smoothing to reduce noise in a single frame by up to 6 times, (4) uses spatially adaptive contrast enhancement to reveal details hidden in glare and shadow, increasing local contrast by up to 8 times, and (5) uses adaptive temporal averaging to increase SNR and separate true motion from seeing caused motion. This project will benefit from past and concurrent projects that have already solved many of the most challenging aspects of building the proposed hardware, and have produced products that our company already sells to perform functions 2, 3, and 4 above. Thus the proposed program is of unusually low risk and benefits from tremendous synergy with past and ongoing projects. Consequently we have great confidence that this project will provide the Army with a nearly complete solution to their need to cut through turbulent seeing, and provide a compact, low-power, “drop-in” video post-processing chip suitable for use in a variety of vision systems.