Cheap high resolution thermal imaging could replace the flashlight and bring a boom in new night vision products

New, low-cost chips for sensing thermal energy could lead to a raft of new night-vision products, engineers say, ushering in everything from smarter cars to handheld devices for spelunking.

A new technology used by Raytheon, “wafer-level packaging,” dramatically reduces the cost of making these thermal sensors. The advances could – for the first time – put a thermal weapons sight in the hands of every soldier in a platoon. But the commercial and law-enforcement uses are endless, too, developers say.

“Once it reaches a certain price point, you’ll see it kind of popping up in a lot of different areas,” said Adam Kennedy, a lead engineer at Raytheon Vision Systems. “That’s just very, very exciting.”

The chips “see” heat, meaning they work in total darkness. Older technologies work by amplifying tiny traces of visible light, such as starlight, or by illuminating scenes with an infrared lamp.

The uses go far beyond seeing in the dark. A car equipped with these sensors could determine whether a weight in the back seat is a child or a sack of groceries by looking at its heat signature, and then could adjust its airbags accordingly. A police officer could follow a fugitive by the heat of his footprints.

Wafer-level packaging uses the same process used to make computer chips. It combines thousands of tiny windows and thermal detectors, known as microbolometers, on the same flat surface. The design greatly simplifies construction.

A historic building glows in this thermal image taken near Raytheon’s Goleta, Calif. laboratories.

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