Sep 23 2008
An interdisciplinary team of professors from Stevens Institute of Technology – Dr. Victor B. Lawrence, Dr. Hamid Hadim, Dr. Hong Man, Dr. Rainer Martini and Dr. Bruce McNair – has been awarded $2.365 million to conduct research for a US ARMY Research, Development and Engineering Command-Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (RDECOM-ARDEC) National Small Arms Center (NSAC) Task Order Sub-Agreement (TOSA), titled "A Standalone/Networked Compact, Low Power, Image-fused, Multi-spectrum Sensor System for Target Acquisitions, Tracking and Fire Control,"
The research award will be dispersed in two phases – Phase I for a period of four months in the amount of $444,000 and Phase II for a period of 20 additional months in the amount of $1.921 million.
The Advanced Fire Control Technology Army Technology Objective (ATO) of NSAC seeks to demonstrate solutions that provide advanced fire control component technology that include more accurate range tracking and determination of moving targets, weight distribution, weight reduction, power management, and power distribution for small arms thereby increasing the war fighter's lethality and availability of small arms.
"In response to this need," said Professor Lawrence, who is also Associate Dean of the Schaefer School of Engineering & Science at Stevens, "we are proposing to develop an image-fused multi-wavelength sensor system which combines target image information from different energy spectrums to produce a superior resultant image for visible display as well as target identification and range tracking."
"The proposed project contains three major components," said Professor Hadim of Mechanical Engineering, "a multi-wavelength sensor subsystem, an imaging and computing subsystem, and system packaging." The sensor subsystem is comprised of a dual laser radar system (LIDAR), together with acoustic SONAR and forward looking infrared (FLIR) image acquisition technologies.
The FLIR system uses a miniature infrared focal plane array camera and, in combination with a broadband visible/near-IR video camera, can operate in daylight or darkness to provide more detailed target acquisition and/or target identification. During night-time operation, the high-resolution FLIR imaging system, together with the high resolution near-IR would provide detail comparable to high resolution visible light systems. While various components of the target acquisition system are commercially available, e.g., FLIR imaging cameras and laser range finders, we are proposing to develop the next generation advanced miniature high resolution FLIR sensors, integrated with laser fire control and target acquisition systems. In addition, our system will combine imaging techniques with acoustic Doppler range finding algorithms to provide superior performance.
Working together with the imaging and sensor suite, the system also includes a computing subsystem which can perform data fusion, visualization and target analysis tasks.
Packaging design of the proposed system will also be conducted while considering the extreme loading and harsh environmental conditions required by military small arms applications in which the system is to be operated.
Upon completion of the first phase, the basic concepts of the proposed multi-wavelength imaging fire control target acquisition system will be demonstrated. Upon completion of the second phase the various components of the proposed multi-wavelength imaging fire control target acquisition system and a prototype of the entire system will be demonstrated and validated in the laboratory to achieve Technology Readiness Level 4 (TRL 4).