초록 ▼

A system for airborne detection of fires and transmission of fire location and characteristic data to the system ground station. The system includes an airborne pod and an associated ground station. The pod uses a passive infrared (IR) scanning system which employs a rotating and nutating mirror wit

A system for airborne detection of fires and transmission of fire location and characteristic data to the system ground station. The system includes an airborne pod and an associated ground station. The pod uses a passive infrared (IR) scanning system which employs a rotating and nutating mirror within an air slipstream driven propeller/spinner and is optically coupled to an infrared detector. A computer in the pod receives fire pod GPS position, IR detector fire spot detection pulse or `hit` plus fire spot characteristics, spinner/mirror rotation and nutation angle at the `hit` time and pod platform attitude relative to North-East-down using an on board Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). The computer then calculates the firespot GPS location, and processes associated firespot characteristic data and downlinks this data to the ground station. Onboard pod video scene cameras also provide operational video that is also downlinked to the ground station.

대표청구항 ▼

[ What is claimed is:] [1.]1. An aircraft borne system for detecting and locating forest or other fire spots, vehicles, and other IR emitting sources on a terrain, the system comprising:a means for establishing the position of the aircraft borne system within a reference frame; anda means for scanni

[ What is claimed is:] [1.]1. An aircraft borne system for detecting and locating forest or other fire spots, vehicles, and other IR emitting sources on a terrain, the system comprising:a means for establishing the position of the aircraft borne system within a reference frame; anda means for scanning terrain and receiving and measuring IR emitting source photons and determining the position of the IR emitting source relative to the aircraft borne system by determining position vectors from the aircraft borne system to the IR emitting sources which comprises a rotating optics head containing a rotating and nutating mirror contained in a spinner rotationally mounted to a pod which scans the terrain and reflects the IR photons to a photon detector.