High-resolution polarization-sensitive imaging sensors

In order to recognize three-dimensional objects, conventional methods in robot vision perform shape extraction by sensing the intensity of light reflected or emitted by objects. A fundamental problem associated with sensing the intensity of light is that intensity gives one parameter while the surface orientation of objects has two degrees of freedom. Physics Innovations Inc. is developing thermal imaging techniques where, in each image pixel, three of the four Stokes parameters are sensed. The Stokes parameters are chosen to be intensity, percent of polarization, and angle of the plane of polarization. Although conventional unpolarized thermal infrared intensity images of terrestrial scenes have low contrast, images of percent of polarization and angle of the plane of polarization have useful contrast for different surface orientations. This added contrast should facilitate image segmentation and classification of objects. In the proposed project, we will more than double the spatial resolution of our polarization-sensitive thermal imaging sensor. The sensor will also be able to capture polarimetric data for point source objects, e.g. targets at long range. High-resolution polarimetic data can be captured and displayed in nearly real time.