Iris Recognition That Detects Hostiles Being Developed for Darpa
More eye tracking news from the homeland security industry, this time from Wired’s Danger Room. The Pentagon is currently funding researchers that are developing mini-cameras that can locate and scan eyeballs.
The article says a team of electrical engineers at Southern Methodist University (SMU) has created cameras with funding from Darpa, which is the Pentagon’s research agency. The cameras first started showing up in the blogs last year, when Marc Christensen, a professor at SMU announced their development. The cameras take advantage of new smart, ultra-slim technology that combines images from low-resolution sensors to make a high-res picture. It’s called Panoptes, and it’s essentially a lightweight, flat camera with the power of a big lens in a device that measures about five millimeters in width.
The system is made up of a large number of tiny imagers – small, simple cameras that can each be directed independently from one another. As there’s no large lens, Panoptes can be entirely flat. A central processor combines images into a single picture, creating a high-resolution image – one far greater than individual imagers. Think “the sum of the parts greater than the whole.”
The cameras were originally designed for miniature drone sensors and troop helmet cams, but the Pentagon has funded SMU’s Christensen again this year with $1.6 million to merge the cameras with active illumination and handheld Pico projection devices. The plan is to allow photos captured on small devices to be transformed for large-format viewing. Essentially, the extra money will allow SMU and the Pentagon to do more than what a lens could do, according to Christensen.
“This platform is really just the base, upon which we’ll focus on different applications,” Christensen told Wired.com. “Now we’re enhancing resolution even more, so the images are a 3-D map with even better, more accurate details.”
With further development, the cameras could yield a 3-D image useful for seeing in caves and dark urban areas, and for the creation of versatile “non-cooperative” iris-detection security cameras. SMU is calling it Smart-Iris, and it’s due to eliminate iris scanning problems like glare, eyelashes, dim lighting, and unwillingness to stop and stare directly into a dedicated iris-detection camera.
Take a look at the article to see more – and keep an eye out for further news and developments coming out of SMU and the Pentagon.
Darpa’s Beady-Eyed Camera Spots the ‘Non-Cooperative’
No related articles.