Radiant energy – Infrared-to-visible imaging
Reexamination Certificate
1999-11-22
2002-11-05
Hannaher, Constantine (Department: 2878)
Radiant energy
Infrared-to-visible imaging
C359S356000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06476391
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The inventions relate to a head mounted or hand held infrared imaging system, and more particularly to an infrared imaging system for an advanced rescue vision system. One embodiment relates to a head mounted passive infrared imaging system; and another embodiment relates to an active head mounted or hand held infrared imaging system.
2. Background Information
Infrared means that the wavelength of infrared radiation is longer than visible light (from 0.38 &mgr; to 0.78 &mgr;). Infrared light shares many of the properties of visible light, but its different wavelength has several unique characteristics. For instance, materials that are opaque to visible light may be transparent to infrared, and vice-versa. Infrared is much less subject to scattering and absorption by smoke or dust than visible, and infrared cannot be seen by human eye.
Also, unlike visible light, which is given off by ordinary objects only at very high temperatures, infrared energy is emitted by all objects at ordinary temperatures higher than 0° K. This means that infrared energy is all around us all the time, even in the dark. Different objects give off varying amounts of infrared energy, depending on the temperature of the object and their emissivity. Passive IR cameras are designed to sense differing amounts of infrared energy coming from the various areas of a scene by focal plane array detector and to convert them to corresponding intensities of visible light by electronics for display purposes. This permits true see-in-the-dark capability as well as the ability to observe the thermal properties in all light conditions.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Passive System
A feature of the invention is a head mounted passive infrared imaging system for use in an advanced rescue vision system.
Objects of the invention include eliminating the operational deficiencies in hand held infrared imaging devices, reduce the cost and weight, provide for unimpeded wireless imagery signal transmission, have the imaging device voice activated, and provide for images that can be colored and identified by neural network chips.
Fire creates smoke and dust. A fire fighter can not see the fire and human being through smoke and dust, because the visible light with wavelength less than 0.78 &mgr; is created by smoke and dust. However if a fire fighter has an Infrared Imager, he is able to see the fire and human being through smoke and dust because the smoke and dust can not scatter the infrared light with a wavelength longer than 1 &mgr; emitted from fire and human being. In addition the IR imager also can see objects in complete darkness.
The system according to the invention uses cutting edge technologies such as Uncooled Staring Focal Plane detector Array, Hot Pressed Polycrystal Objective Lens, Helmet Mounted Display Using Transparent Image Combiner, and Neural Network Image Colorization and Recognition to dramatically enhance the system performance and reduce the weight and cost.
The helmet mounted infrared imaging system can:
Detect and recognize flames, humans and other objects,
Reduce the weight of the helmet components (including camera head and combiner) to less than 0.5 pounds,
View simultaneously visible and invisible surroundings without hindering operations.
Operate the imaging system hands-off; and
Transmit the imaging data to and receive the map from a remote sight.
Alternative Embodiment
In an alternative embodiment, the infrared camera is mounted centered in front of the display.
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Franz Bernard E.
Gagliardi Albert
Hannaher Constantine
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