Barnard Microsystems Limited

Stereo imagery can be used to:

• work out the distances to any obstacles, such as any planes, buildings, or, mountains ahead
• detect the nearest object in the field of view, to enable a warning to be issued, if the UAV is about to collide with the obstacle
• enable the UAV to use the distance-to-obstacle feature, to calculate a flight path, to avoid the obstacle

Here's a thought:

One of the imagers could be fitted with a vertical polariser, the other with a horizontal polariser. The difference between the images from the two imagers could be used to detect the presence of water, since only light with a horizontal polarization is reflected from a water surface.

www.sri.com + www.videre.com

Stereo imaging can be accomplished through the use of two imaging CCD cameras and suitable software, such as the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) Small Vision System software, developed by Kurt Konolige at SRI. A complex, optimised, mathematical procedure is applied in real time to the information from both cameras, to generate the 3D imagery for automated scenery interpretation, in which the depth-to-any-feature is known.