A team from IDEAS (Oslo) and EDI (Riga) visited the lab at ITS in Kjeller with the goal to prepare electro-optical tests of thermal cameras with microbolometer arrays. The 3-day visit was an important milestone for the team because this marked the test readiness of the experimental setup at ITS and the camera demonstrator from IDEAS and EDI. IDEAS wants to use the setup at ITS in the future for assessing the key performance parameters of thermal infrared cameras such as noise, resolution, timing, and more. ITS is an important partner for IDEAS in the development of new thermal infrared cameras and for the R&D on multi-spectral and hyper-spectral imaging. IDEAS and EDI have collaborated under APPLAUSE ECSEL JU on the development of new thermal infrared camera technology based on IDEAS proprietary electronic readout with microbolometer arrays and EDI image processing software. This technology is interesting for many applications with thermal infrared radiation, for example, remote sensing of heat, measuring of surface temperatures and assessing humidity and gas concentrations in the environment. Microbolometer arrays are suitable for New-Space sensors because they are affordable compared to state-of-the-art MCT-based infrared sensors. The photographs show the demo camera and thermal images of Gard Momrak Selnesaunet (ITS PhD candidate), Thomas Nesjø (IDEAS MSc candidate), Dirk Meier (IDEAS CTO), Torbjørn Østmoe (IDEAS Scientist), Torbjørn Skauli (ITS Professor and CENSSS WP1 leader).
The thermal image was acquired by Rihard Novickis (EDI Scientist) using the demo camera. The image has many artifacts which will be studied and improved in the future.
