The photo shown here was taken by an infrared (IR) camera (Image courtesy Fraunhofer IMS).
Munich, Germany — At night on an unlit country road: the bends in the road restrict the view ahead and, to make things worse, it is foggy. The car driver is exercising all due care and yet still does not see the deer on the road ahead until it is nearly too late. An emergency stop prevents a collision with the animal just in time. In such situations infrared cameras could provide a better level of safety.
Objects at roughly body temperature are luminous in the infrared region at a wavelength of around ten micrometers. Detectors in the camera register this thermal radiation and locate the source of heat.
This could enable drivers to see people or animals long before they come into vision through dipped headlights. Other road users would not be inconvenienced by the invisible infrared radiation.
The problem is that infrared cameras for the wavelength range above five micrometers like it cold – the sensor has to be constantly cooled down to about minus 193 degrees Celsius.
Uncooled imagers for the long-wave infrared range do already exist today, but they are mainly used in the military sphere and are more or less unavailable on the European market. This is now set to change.
Research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS in Duisburg have succeeded in producing an imaging sensor for the long-wave infrared range that functions at room temperature.
“We could be the first in Germany to offer this technology,” says Dr. Dirk Weiler, scientist at the IMS.
At the heart of the IRFPA (Infrared Focal Plane Array*) sensor is a microbolometer – a temperature-sensitive detector that absorbs long-wave infrared light.
Read the rest of the article: Source: (© Fraunhofer IMS) — Research News July 2010 [ PDF 474KB ] www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2010/07/infrared-camera.jsp
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60 years ago, on March 26, 1949, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft was founded in the large conference hall of the Bavarian Ministry of the Economy. At the time, the idea was to develop new structures for research after the war’s destruction, and to spur reconstruction of the economy.
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* ED NOTE: Passive Microbolometer FPAs have been available in the USA for several years from Raytheon Corporation and FLIR Corporation, but since there are export controls on them they have not been previously sold overseas. In addition, several European companies have been selling similar devices, but their costs or volume have nor apparently been low enough to appeal to such cost-sensitive uses as automotive night thermal vision devices. (A night vision option based on such devices was offered on some US made Cadillac automobiles in 200o but discontinued in 2008; BMW has offered several systems since 2005; Audi since 2010.)
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