Proceedings Article | 22 April 2010
KEYWORDS: Sensors, Mid-IR, Long wavelength infrared, Short wave infrared radiation, Video, Received signal strength, CCD image sensors, Target acquisition, Performance modeling, Modulation transfer functions
Operating environments that US Soldiers and Marines are in have changed, along with the types of tasks that they are
required to perform. In addition, the potential imaging sensor options available have increased. These changes make it
necessary to examine how these new tasks are affected by waveband and time of day. US Army Research, Development
and Engineering Command, Communications Electronics Research Development and Engineering Center, Night Vision
and Electronic Sensor Directorate (NVESD), investigated one such task for several wavebands (MWIR, LWIR, Visible,
and SWIR) and during both day and night. This task involved identification of nine different personnel targets: US
Soldier, US Marine, Eastern-European/Asian Soldier, Urban Insurgent, Rural Insurgent, Hostile Militia, Indigenous
Inhabitant, Contract Laborer, and Reporter. These nine distinct targets were made up from three tactically significant
categories: Friendly Force, Combatant and Neutral/Non-Combatant. A ten second video was taken of an actor dressed
as one of these targets. The actors walk a square pattern, enabling all aspects to be seen in each video clip. Target
characteristics were measured and characteristic dimension, target contrast tabulated. A nine-alternative, forced-choice
human perception test was performed at NVESD. This test allowed NVESD to quantify the ability of observers to
discriminate between personnel targets for each waveband and time of day. The task difficulty criterion, V50, was also
calculated allowing for future modeling using the NVESD sensor performance model.
