at 640x512@30hz and radiometric you are already way at the top.
There are higher resolution uncooled detectors, only a few. The very highest resolution uncooled sensor is a TWV1912 made by Fairchild/BAE - and to my knowledge there is one available camera build around it by Sierra Olympic, the Vayu HD. While I was able to hold myself back from asking them about the price, I am expecting it to be in the 30k range.
But implementation will be much more difficult, eventhough they market it for airborne use, it does not produce the radiometric flir images that some photogrammetry apps now support. I would ask for a demo, if you are in such a position where they answer your and workout the software workflow with help from the developers of whatever software you are currently using, if they offer specelized solution.
Any kind of airborne detector that is cooled, can have even higher resolutions, these are normally build for police helicopters, or military aircraft and focus on target tracking, range indication and high zoom levels and less radiometric data for mosaics.
Is superresolution the thing you talk about? It normally works on a camera that is in about the same place and takes 4 images in short succession and using the hand wiggle or wind to move the sensor by a fraction of a pixel resulting in a single high resolution image when combined. In photogrammetry you have a point cloud, where every point is based on data gathered, to get better resolution, just gather more points by flying over the same section from a different angle and direction. In theory there are many ways to interpolate more data points based on the seemingly random intervals you have with your reconstruction when making up a wavelet direction. But I have yet to read about it in detail. I am not sure how advanced software is in the field, but using a visible light camera to create the pointcloud gives you more data points due to the high resolution, if possible a solid model could be reconstructed and the thermal pixels projected onto them. Giving you a "3D MSX" dataset.
sUAS and thermal imaging cameras basically describes my career! There are higher resolution cameras out there, but you won't find many theatre radiometric. Is that a requirement?
They're not that big, but not much has been done to develop them into a usable system on drones.
These might be worth a look:
https://ipi-infrared.com.au/product/keii-hl-1024-uav-special-module/
http://en.keii.com.cn/index.php/Product/detail/paretn_id/0/cat_id/14/goods_id/27#path
I have no idea on quality, cost etc though. Others here might be able to provide better examples.
Glad you are in contact with BAE, I hope Sierra Olympic responds to you as well. I want to know the price of things.
The paper you linked is very very informative for me. It really sounds like they put a lot of testing and thought into different single frame superresolution methods and their examples look great. I need to read it again while awake and take some notes, but there wasn't any software they offered to download and try our own, right?
That will be pretty amazing. In 10 years perhaps there will be 4k resolution thermals! And the Workswell camera actually works well?
The whole thing is a fricken mess. I get that this is a competitive industry but sharing specs and pushing more people to integrate the core will sell more cores.
The whole thing is a fricken mess. I get that this is a competitive industry but sharing specs and pushing more people to integrate the core will sell more cores.
It's not really the industry's fault. I'm sure any manufacturer would love so sell as many cores/cameras as the market would stand.
The problem is that any decent thermal camera is 'dual-use' (ie handy for the bad guys shooting back at you) and the governments of more-developed nations are keen to prevent the "wrong people" getting their hands on the technology. Unfortunately, this means that many innocent users are denied access to products that the manufacturers' commercial departments would love to be able to sell.
There is some change in the air. As has been said quite colourfully elsewhere by a native of that country, some Chinese suppliers don't observe international regulations in the same way as, say, Flir, meaning that there is likely to be an increasing tide of indigenously developed sensors and cameras of increasing sophistication arriving on the market. I believe that production of a 1024x768 sensor has been announced; it's not too big a stretch of the imagination to guess that higher resolutions are in development. I suspect 320x240-class Chinese-sourced thermal cameras will be almost commodity items fairly soon, and that much higher resolutions will also be available for far less than one expects to pay at the moment.
Ten years ago the idea of a good resolution miniature thermal camera on a drone was pretty much still in the realms of science fiction. Who knows what the next ten years will bring?
One trick is to mechanically displace the sensor 1 or 2 pixels horizontally . ... Its crude, but it works.
Steve
One trick is to mechanically displace the sensor 1 or 2 pixels horizontally . ... Its crude, but it works.
Steve
I was under the impression that this resolution-enhancement technique moved the sensor half a pixel (in each dimension) and combined four exposures to make a single higher-resolution image.
Essentially, you're relying on fill-factor effects: an individual pixel is not usually equally sensitive across its whole span and height; there is normally a sensitivity minimum at each edge (where it abuts each adjacent pixel). By shifting the array so that the area of maximum sensitivity moves to the position where previously there was little or none, the effective resolution can be more or less doubled in both axes. The limiting factors are the fill factor and sensitivity profile of each pixel: it may be that it's possible to enhance actual resolution more on one axis than the other, depending on the design of the sensor.
It's a technique I've only ever seen used on thermal imaging systems but there's no reason why it shouldn't be applied to other wavelengths.