Field evaluations of dual-band fusion for color night vision

As part of an advanced night vision program sponsored by DARPA, a method for real-time color night vision based on the fusion of visible and infrared sensors has been developed and demonstrated. The work, based on principles of color vision in humans and primates, achieves an effective strategy for combining the complementary information present in the two sensors. Our sensor platform consists of a 640x480 low-light CCD camera developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and a 320x240 uncooled microbolometer thermal infrared camera from Lockheed Martin Infrared. Image capture, data processing, and display are implemented in real-time (30 fps) on commercial hardware. Recent results from field tests at Lincoln Laboratory and in collaboration with U.S. Army Special Forces at Fort Campbell will be presented. During the tests, we evaluated the performance of the system for ground surveillance and as a driving aid. Here, we report on the results using both a wide-field of view (42 deg.) and a narrow field of view (7 deg.) platforms.