OKSI awarded U.S. Army Contract on FLIR software technology for thermal night vision sensors

OKSI has been awarded a $2 million follow-on contract from the U.S. Army to continue developing their scene-based Variable Aperture Mechanism for Non-Uniformity Correction (VAM-NUC) system for integration to the 3rd Generation Forward Looking Infrared (3GEN FLIR) program. 3GEN FLIR is an advanced targeting sensor system produced by Raytheon Technologies to enhance lethality, survivability and situational awareness under the cloak of darkness. The system provides overmatch for the Army's ground combat platforms with notable applications like the M1 Abrams Tank and the MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAS.

The 3GEN FLIR provides high-definition Mid-Wave and Long-Wave Infrared (MWIR/LWIR) imagery at further distances than ever before. It can penetrate harsh environmental conditions like darkness, smoke, rain, snow and fog. Additional performance enhancements include improvements in bad-pixel-clusters, dark current, noise, quantum efficiency, operability, spectral crosstalk, modulation transfer function and Non-Uniformity Correction (NUC) stability, which OKSI aims to further enhance.

One of the major issues the Army faces is the significant gain and offset drift of the sensor. OKSI has developed a novel scene-based NUC solution that runs in the background and in real-time, minimizing impact on situational awareness. By leveraging hardware capabilities of the 3GEN FLIR, the software automatically performs gain and offset corrections that are invisible to the operator, as opposed to traditional, flag-based methods. OKSI's novel technology leverages a combination of the VAM present in 3GEN FLIR systems, and techniques developed by the Army to use the VAM, along with proprietary state-of-the-art scene-based gain/offset correction algorithms.

“OKSI has a proud legacy of advancing imaging technologies, that includes pioneering our Variable Aperture Mechanism (VAM), that has been instrumental in enhancing third-generation FLIR systems,” says Chris HolmesParker, CEO, OKSI. “Today, we're thrilled to build on this foundation by delivering cutting-edge capabilities that elevate image clarity and situational awareness, empowering our warfighters with the tools they need to operate effectively and decisively on the battlefield.”