Biologically-inspired visible and infrared camera technology development

Visible band and Infrared (IR) band camera and vision system development has been inspired by the human and animal vision systems. This paper will discuss the development of the Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) spectrum cameras from the front end optics, the detector or photon to electron convertor, preprocessing such as non-uniformity correction, automatic gain control, foveal vision processing done by the human eye, the gimbal system (human or animal eye ball and head motion), and the analog and digital paths of the data (optic nerve in humans). The computer vision algorithms (human or animal brain vision processing) will not be discussed in this paper. The Integrated Design Services in the College of Engineering at Penn State University has been developing EO/IR camera and sensor based computer vision systems for several years and combined with more than twenty years of developing imaging sensor stabilized platforms will use this imaging system development expertise to describe how the human and animal vision systems inspired the design and development of the computer based vision system. This paper will illustrate a block diagram of both the human eye and a typical EO/IR camera while comparing the two imaging systems.