U.S. military researchers needed a company to develop night vision devices that were smaller and lighter than current night vision goggles, which are about the same size and weight as a typical pair of glasses. They found a solution from Physical Sciences Inc.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) officials announced Wednesday a 6.4 million contract with Physical Sciences Corporation for the Eyewear Form Factor Enhanced Night Vision (ENVision) project.
Current night vision goggles are typically 4 inches long and weigh 2.2 pounds. Creates a lot of torque on the wearer's neck. This would limit the wearer's flexibility, and prolonged use of these optoelectronic devices could lead to chronic injury.
Modern night vision goggles also burden the wearer with a narrow field of view and typically have a limited field of view for spectral imaging in the near-infrared spectral band, limiting scene perception.
This is in contrast to refractive optics and image intensifier tubes used for imaging (the technology in both modern night vision systems has remained largely unchanged since its inception). Instead, the DARPA ENVision project asked SRI International, UCSD, and Raytheon BBN to overcome these limitations by developing an enhanced direct-vision night vision system that approximates the size and weight of typical glasses.
SRI International won a 5.2 million ENVision contract on November 3, 2021, UCSD won a 3 million ENVision contract on September 24, 2021, and Raytheon BBN won a 230 contract on September 23, 2021 million dollar contract.
The three agencies will develop small, lightweight night vision goggles that extend the spectral range beyond the near-infrared to include short-, mid- and long-wave infrared spectral bands through a common aperture, giving users access to the 1.5-12µm spectral range. In addition, these night vision glasses can expand the user's field of view to natural vision around 100 degree .
Optics experts have attempted to expand the field of view of night vision goggles, but improvements have come at the cost of increased system size, weight and wear and tear for users. The ENVision project aims to enable direct infrared vision through photon upconversion, exploring the next technological leap in night vision technology.
While current night vision systems employ a multi-step process, the physics of directly upconverting infrared photons into visible light have been known since the invention of the laser in the 1960s. Direct photon upconversion involves the absorption of two or more photons and the re-emission of higher energy photons.
Currently, these processes are inefficient and have a limited bandwidth of light that can be upconverted simultaneously. However, recent advances in material systems, such as polar-structured and sensitive core-shell structured nanoparticles, have opened up new avenues to explore photonic upconversion.
DARPA researchers say night vision systems based on photon upconversion will eliminate the need for some components and could lead to simpler all-optical night vision systems in the future, such as night vision contact lenses.
Flat optics and flat image intensifiers allow direct viewing of multiple infrared bands through a common aperture. Structured materials such as diffractive optical elements and metamaterials enable one to embed optical functions far beyond traditional refractive materials into an optical element.
While wide field of view, wide bandwidth, and high imaging quality can all be achieved individually, combining these features in practice remains a challenge. In addition to flat optics, image enhancement can also convert weak infrared light into visible light photons detectable by the naked eye.
The ENVision project will last four years, divided into two bienniums, and will include two technical areas: Prototype and Upconversion. Participants in the first technology area will develop samples of eyeglass form factor enhanced night vision systems; participants in the second technology area will study broadband direct photon upconversion.
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