TRICLOBS portable triband color lowlight observation system

We present the design and first test results of the TRICLOBS (TRI-band Color Low-light OBServation) system The TRICLOBS is an all-day all-weather surveillance and navigation tool. Its sensor suite consists of two digital image intensifiers (Photonis ICU's) and an uncooled longwave infrared microbolometer (XenICS Gobi 384). The night vision sensor suite registers the visual (400-700 nm), the near-infrared (700-1000 nm) and the longwave infrared (8-14 m) bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. The optical axes of the three cameras are aligned, using two dichroic beam splitters: an ITO filter to reflect the LWIR part of the incoming radiation into the thermal camera, and a B43-958 hot mirror to split the transmitted radiation into a visual and NIR part. The individual images can be monitored through two LCD displays. The TRICLOBS provides both digital and analog video output. The digital video signals can be transmitted to an external processing unit through an Ethernet connection. The analog video signals can be digitized and stored on on-board harddisks. An external processor is deployed to apply a fast lookup-table based color transform (the Color-the-Night color mapping principle) to represent the TRICLOBS image in natural daylight colors (using information in the visual and NIR bands) and to maximize the detectability of thermal targets (using the LWIR signal). The external processor can also be used to enhance the quality of all individual sensor signals, e.g. through noise reduction and contrast enhancement. © 2009 SPIE.