Stereoscopic uncooled thermal imaging with autostereoscopic 3D flat-screen display in military driving enhancement systems

Thermal cameras are widely used in driver vision enhancement systems. However, in pathless terrain, driving becomes challenging without having a stereoscopic perception. Stereoscopic imaging is a well-known technique already for a long time with understood physical and physiological parameters. Recently, a commercial hype has been observed, especially in display techniques. The commercial market is already flooded with systems based on goggle-aided 3D-viewing techniques. However, their use is limited for military applications since goggles are not accepted by military users for several reasons. The proposed uncooled thermal imaging stereoscopic camera with a geometrical resolution of 640x480 pixel perfectly fits to the autostereoscopic display with a 1280x768 pixels. An eye tracker detects the position of the observer's eyes and computes the pixel positions for the left and the right eye. The pixels of the flat panel are located directly behind a slanted lenticular screen and the computed thermal images are projected into the left and the right eye of the observer. This allows a stereoscopic perception of the thermal image without any viewing aids. The complete system including camera and display is ruggedized. The paper discusses the interface and performance requirements for the thermal imager as well as for the display.