Fusion Vision

I know the above image looks as if it came straight from a horror flick, but let me assure you it is not. People of this era would be very much familiar with what night and thermal visions are. In the context of military technology, they provide a great advantage to the soldiers when they are operating in pitch darkness and therefore every country vies to equip it's soldiers with such technology.

Night vision generally refers to light or image intensification technology wherein which the ambient light during night-time is multiplied and presented directly in front of the user's eyes (The sources of ambient light may be moonlight or starlight). But one common misconception is that night vision devices (a.k.a NVD/NOD) work in absolute darkness. The truth is that it doesn't, for it to work in complete darkness an active illumination is required in the form of near infrared light source.

Thermal vision is a whole different story altogether. It captures the thermal radiation emitted by an object and produces a corresponding image output. This thermal radiation can be the body temperature in case of living beings or the heat captured by an object, thus it effectively paints a picture in which things with different temperatures have different colouring (Thermal scanning at airports has become a very common sight after Covid19 hit the world populace). Infrared vision devices is a subset of thermal imaging devices and it captures only the infrared radiation emitted by an object thereby giving an black and white image output (the problem being when a thing is sufficiently hot enough it gives out radiation in both visible and infrared spectrum).

The advantage of NVDs are that it can provide an accurate representation of an user's surroundings while it is not able to see through fog, rain or smoke. Whereas a thermal imaging device can see through fog, rain or smoke but is not able to give an in-depth visual of the user's surroundings (infrared vision devices are more prominently used in the military and is better suited to the task than a thermal imaging device, but it can not act as a substitute to NVD/NOD).

Now combining the above two systems and making them work in harmony will provide greater levels of situational awareness to the soldiers that are using them. This is considered as the next evolution of military imaging technology. The picture that was presented to you in the beginning of this article is the fused image from a combined night vision and thermal vision device. So I think now you would be able to appreciate the concept behind this technology of 'Fusion Vision'.

After-all in a battle one who sees first shoots first (and most probably doesn't die first).