EAST FISHKILL, N.Y. — Security staffers use thermal imagers for jobs in border surveillance, force protection, and search and rescue. They need durable, lightweight tools for those crucial tasks.
So when engineers at DRS, in Parsippany, N.J., were designing a handheld thermal imager (HHTI), they needed a microdisplay that could work in dark, smoke, or sunlight. The tool is portable, so it also had to be rugged and lightweight.
 The handheld thermal imager (HHTI) from DRS Technologies uses a microdisplay from eMagin Corp. that is able to work in dark, smoke, or sunlight. |
They found an answer with eMagin Corp. in East Fishkill, N.Y., a manufacturer of active-matrix OLED-on-silicon displays. DRS designers chose an SVGA+ microdisplay for the unit. OLED stands for organic light-emitting diode.
Viewers can detect vehicles and man-sized targets at long range with the HHTI imager, which gains high resolution from the DRS VOx uncooled microbolometer engine.
"DRS's HHTI offers soldiers unparalleled high-resolution, high-quality imagery in darkness, smoke, and fog, as well as in broad daylight," says Fred L. Marion, president of the DRS Technologies Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group in Palm Bay, Fla.
One challenge was how to display that much data on a small screen, says Susan Jones, eMagin's chief marketing and strategy officer.
Optical engineers at eMagin specialize in building near-to-the-eye virtual-imaging products, integrating high-resolution OLED displays (smaller than one inch), magnifying optics, and systems technologies to create a virtual image that appears comparable to that of a computer monitor.
"The HHTI delivers a truly impressive amount of high-quality image data," Jones says. "eMagin's OLED display plays a key role in delivering the HHTI's wide field-of-view immersion display system. HHTI provides a perspective that is very real and clear."
For more information, see www.drs.com or www.emagin.com.
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