Customised electro-optical sensors for the German Armed Forces UAV programs (Luna, Brevel)

摘要

The use Unmanned Airborne Vehicles (UAVs) for different application in surveillance and reconnaissance requires customised imaging systems fitting in size and weight into the UAVs and providing the adequate electro-optical performance in terms of field of view (FOV), field of regard (FOR) and geometrical resolution resulting in the achievable mission performance. ATTICA P256D is a very compact, extremely light-weight digital thermal camera operating in the 3-5-μm waveband featuring an uncompromising design for low weight. Image generation is performed by a Platinum-Silicide (PtSi) focal-plane-array (FPA) detector with 256 * 256 elements, developed and produced by AIM with an integrated minicooler. Total weight of the whole IR camera is 1.7 kg. The thermal camera OPHELIOS in BREVEL configuration contains a wide-range zoom objective with a magnification-change factor of 8 for large field of regard and high identification performance. The thermal imager is integrated into an internal structure which itself is mounted into a frame in a way that allows rotation of the whole camera by n * 360°for compensation of both roll movement of the UAV and image derotation. This configuration offers the best volume/performance ratio available in this performance class.