Protection of fixed sites from chemical, biological, or radiological aerosol plume attacks depends on early warning so that there is time to take mitigating actions. Early warning requires continuous, autonomous, and rapid coverage of large surrounding areas; however, this must be done at an affordable cost. To address the problem of low cost, persistent, wide area surveillance, a low-cost broadband thermal IR camera pod with multi-image stitching and processing algorithms has been developed for automatic recognition and tracking of aerosol plumes.
The Dragonfly is a rugged, modular, static pod design, which accommodates as many as six micro-bolometer IR cameras for 30deg to 180deg of azimuth coverage. Various image-processing algorithms, including stitching of multiple adjacent FOVs, recognition of aerosol plume objects, and the tracking of aerosol plumes, are used to achieve for real-time detection of aerosol plumes. Aerosol plume detection using micro-bolometer IR cameras is possible due to multiple atmospheric effects.
Publications
Publications“Automated Recognition and Tracking of Aerosol Threat Plumes with an IR Camera Pod.”, Defense, Security, and Sensing 2012, SPIE, Baltimore, Maryland, April 2012 Link Here
