SBIR-STTR Award

The U.S. Army seeks to advance the state-of-the-art in geospatial terrain capture by encouraging development of high-definition 3D/4D imaging systems that are passive and low SWaP. The imaging systems are needed to support ground persistent ISR in austere environments, where power consumption must be minimized and likelihood of detection must be negligible. Photon-X proposes to build such a system based on spatial phase imaging (SPI) and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technologies. All of the requirements set forth in solicitation A14 089 (the Solicitation) can be satisfied by the SPI+SLAM approach (Approach). Phase I, the subject of the present proposal, focuses on describing optimal methods, assessing the technical feasibility and demonstrating key aspects the Approach. Phase II focuses on developing and validating a final system design, producing and testing a prototype and demonstrating a full implementation of the system. Phase III incorporates industry requirements into the design and proceeds to full-scale commercial implementation.

The Army seeks to develop a new tactical-scale scene modeling and information extraction (3D/4D) system based on passive sensing of light flowing in austere environments. In such environments, likelihood of detection must be negligible, hence the systems must be passive. Sensor size and power consumption must be minimal to support tactical ISR operations. Information extraction (IE) must be robust, highly configurable and smart since communication bandwidth is limited at best, denied at worst. And, on an as-needed basis, the systems must be capable of reconstructing dense 3D/4D models of complex objects and scenes so that post-collection analysis and 3D display can be accomplished. To address the Armys requirements, Photon-X proposes to advance development of Spatial Phase Imaging (SPI) systems. SPI systems offer enhanced 3D, volumetric and passive analysis of material surface properties. Our approach will include higher performance polarimetric sensors, computing engines and 3D spatial databases. The feasibility of such systems was shown in Phase I via analysis, prototyping and demonstration. We expect at the end of Phase II to deliver for initial Army testing a prototype SPI System consisting of a helmet mounted SPI Sensor and software running on a tablet computer.