FLIR gets Smart....phone?

August 19, 2013 5:10 PM

Put away those night-vision goggles.

FLIR, a leading manufacturer of infrared sensors, has married a smartphone to its state-of-the-art thermal camera in a concept it displayed at last week's Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) expo in Washington, D.C.

The idea behind the eye-catching device, CEO Andrew Teich says, is to demonstrate the company's new line of miniature Quark camera cores. But he does not rule out the possibility of turning the prototype into a real consumer gadget and giving consumers the chance to take IR pictures with their phones. That depends on whether FLIR can get high tech and low prices to meet halfway.

The company began rolling out Quark in the spring of 2011 as a follow-on to its Tau infrared series, which has been used on small drones such as the Army's RQ-11 Raven. The new Quark core measures just three-quarters of an inch thick and comes in a range of resolutions, the most powerful being 640 x 480, or 0.3 megapixels.

Of course, none of the Quark camera cores will produce glossy, nighttime portraits you'd frame and hang in your living room. Still, Teich says, a 0.3-megapixel core with a 9-mm lens, like the one fitted into the camera-phone sled shown at AUVSI, "can spot a person at about 300 yards."

Read more: Infrared Cameras Now Small Enough to Be in Your Phone - Popular Mechanics
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