Michelle Gonzalez Affiliation: University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College

1. UAV THERMAL CAMERA CALIBRATION USING A CUSTOM DESIGN HOT PLATE Michelle GonzalezAffiliation: University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College 8/11/11 956-280-2512 michelleglez20@yahoo.com

2. Introduction • To Develop a methodology to see if the camera is calibrated and if it is useful to use in the UAV’s and VTOL. • The construction of a low cost design hot plate for the calibration of the thermal camera without the costly use of a vacuum chambers.

3. Research • Literary Review The major application is to evaluate the temperature of river waters. Water temperature is important to the endangered fishes because temperature affects the productivity of the aquatic food base, growing and survival of larval fish, and conditioning of adult fish.

4. Specifications for the ICI P-Series Infrared Camera ICI 7640 P-Series Infrared Camera

5. Current Solution Theoretical design of the custom designed hot plate. Is to design a hot plate for the calibration of the thermal camera.

6. Test Plan • The test plan consists of a comparison between a the heat flow experiments and the infrared thermometer. • We will test for: -dynamic range -range of temperature -distance range -accuracy as the camera is moving -test for noise

7. Other Research SWIR(Shortwave Infrared) NIR Near Infrared InGaAs Thermal Imager 320x256 Indium Galluim Arsenide focal plane array a. Allows the thermal imaging camera to be highly sensitive to energy in the NIR and SWIR wavebands from 0.9-1.7 microns b. The ICI NIR is suitable for IR reflectography, imaging through paints, chemical imaging, and agricultural inspection based on water detection.

8. Applications • Low-light level imaging • Covert surveillance with passive 24 hr/7 day operation • Emission microscopy (is an analytical technique used in materials science to investigate molecular structures and their electronic properties) • Imaging spectroscopy (is similar to color photography, but each pixel acquires many bands of light intensity data from the spectrum, instead of just the three bands of the RGB color model) • Astronomy

9. ICI vs. Goodrich Chart

10. VTOL • Can we apply this SWIR camera to VTOL. • Goodrich is the best option for VTOL but unfortunately is can not re calibrate and the ICI camera can be recalibrated. • The camera is light and small • It has the capability to not just detect a warm object but it can identify and recognize the object. • We can also apply this technology for the search and rescue missions. • And for agricultural testing's (test for freshness in crops)

11. Experiments Chris and I doing some calibrations with the thermal camera. Test were conducted using the heat flow experiment and infrared thermometer. Fig. a) Chris gathering the temperature reading. Fig. c) Michelle pointing the thermal camera at the heat flow experiment. Fig. b) Fluke infrared thermometer.

12. Results • Some tests were done with a heat flow experiment and an infrared thermometer to compare the measurements. Without the correct drivers the camera was showing always two degrees off than the heat flow or the infrared thermometer.

13. 1st Test 2nd Test

14. Conclusion/Discussion • An extensive research was conducted in order to calibrate the thermal camera using a hot plate. A custom design was made for the hot plate but unfortunately the project was not able to be completed due to the lack of time and the problems that we encountered with the ICI company regarding the drivers.