Challenges and Solutions
SWIR InGaAs cameras are not only an important technology in the domain of security and safety, they can also be used in the agriculture, transport and automotive sector, or food and waste sorting industries. At this time, most existing short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) cameras face issues for all-weather outdoor use with strong illumination variations.
The French SME New Imaging Technologies NIT is specialized in manufacturing logarithmic wide dynamic range (WDR) imaging sensors and cameras in the visible and SWIR domain. The combination of Hyperspectral Imaging and WDR logarithmic contrast-based imaging sensors guarantees a high robustness in spectral measurements whatever the light source and its variations. Many applications can be fulfilled, like ice detection on road surfaces, plastic recycling, food chain monitoring, smart agriculture, decamouflage, but also in the art industry for detecting underlying painting layers or counterfeiter.
Gateone Support
New Imaging Technologies has joined the gateone-project to make its product evolve from multispectral to the hyperspectral level. Multispectral means multiple filters or even multiple cameras. In this demonstration, with a single tunable Fabry-Pérot filter mounted onto a NIT camera, it is now possible to acquire a full cube of high contrast images with different focal lengths. Images can be collected from 1100 to 1600 nm frame-by-frame with full control of required wavelengths. This is achieved with a bandwidth that can be selected (10nm or 20nm) and with resolution down to 10nm.
Impact/What’s next
The identification of plastic types or ice vs water detection will now follow a test campaign by NIT to explore all the capabilities offered by this camera. This demonstrator is an addition of 2 high technology building blocks. The next step would then be to move to a higher level of integration with a tunable filter embedded into the camera for a more compact and light-weight version.
