Polaris Sensor Technologies, Inc. is a dynamic commercial and government supplier providing innovative designs, unique products, and state-of-the-art analyses of optical systems. We have a team of optical experts who have extensive experience in designing high-performance optical systems. Our portfolio includes polarization-based imaging systems, sensors, seekers, light scattering modeling, and measurement services. Holding many national and international patents, Polaris Sensor creates custom hardware and unique software solutions providing our customers with the ability to meet mission objective. See More. Know More.^®

Our comprehensive experience in electro-optical design and analysis includes a number of software tools to support analytical and design work.  Modeling knowledge may include lens design and ray tracing software (ZEMAX^®), physical optics propagation models, mechanical design and modeling (SolidWorks^®), electronics modeling and design software, and other general scientific software (C++, LabVIEW^®, MatLAB^®, MathCAD^®, and Mathmatica^®).

Polaris Sensor is located in the heart of historic downtown Huntsville, Alabama.  Our famous high-tech city is fondly known as “The Rocket City” as we are well known for our contributions with the U.S. space program. The Huntsville-area boasts a wonderful eclectic mix of southern history, international cutting-edge technology, urban housing and entertainment growth, numerous and vast dining and shopping experiences, year-round cultural and sporting events. We have an active and avid sports community and outdoor parks for activities such as hiking, biking, and concerts.

Corporate Overview

_____________

Research and Development from Concept to Product

-        Custom electro optic sensors

-        Polarimeters and multispectral sensors

-        Architectures optimized for the application

-        Expertise in VIS, NIR, SWIR, MWIR, LWIR

-        Unique optical relays, telescopes and micro optics

-        Rapid prototyping

-        Limited runs of production 

Testing and Measurements

-       Polarimetric: Muller matrix and Stokes vectors

-       Multiple modalities and flexible spectral resolution

-       Radiometric: optical power and direct/diffuse measurements across multiple modalities

-       Field and flight test support

-       Custom data acquisition and collaboration is available

Algorithm Development

-       Multi object detection, recognition, and tracking

-       Low signal to noise acquisition and tracking

-       Vehicle and pedestrian collision avoidance

-       Orbital debris detection in ground based sensor imagery

-       Processing of satellite imagery

-       Multiple modalities fusion algorithms

-       Multiple data products from sensors

Valuable Benefits to Working For Polaris Sensor Technologies:

-    Play a key role and develop technology, design, build, publish, patent

-   Move quickly in a small company with resources to discover, develop, test

-   Polarimeters detect targets where other systems fail

-       Custom algorithms for mission success

-       Enhanced detection saves time, money, and lives

__________________________

Polarization Provides Enhanced Detail and Contrast

Polarization is a property of waves that describes the orientation of the waves’ amplitude. Light waves are naturally unpolarized, but can be polarized by reflection, refraction, transmission, or scattering. Man-made objects interact differently with unpolarized light than natural objects. Polarimetry seeks to measure information about the orientation (vector nature) of the optical field across a scene. Polarization information displays surface features, shape, shading, and roughness.

Polaris has dedicated years to developing polarization-based imaging systems for military and scientific entities. Commercial systems derived from these efforts provide daylight detail in the dark and visibility in low contrast conditions with real time image processing. 

Polarization enhanced imagery can provide greater detail and contrast than standard thermal or visible imagery. This enhanced detail provides customers a greater advantage for mission-critical target identification and threat detection. Adding polarization to imagers helps the viewer distinguish artificial objects from natural clutter.

_____________

LWIR

Long-Wave Infrared (LWIR) thermal imagers have proven their use in a variety of commercial and military applications to improve detection, recognition, and identification of objects and persons. While thermal imaging can be effective, it often falls short in situations involving high clutter and low thermal contrast. The addition of polarization to standard thermal provides geometrical and material composition to improve contrast and detail.  An imaging polarimeter is especially effective when thermal contrast is low or when a target becomes hidden in background clutter. Polarization Enhanced Imagers enhance the warfighter’s ability to acquire and track targets from a multitude of platforms, as well as remotely identify disturbed earth, which assists in detecting manmade objects that are buried. Commercial and military applications for a LWIR polarizing include object detection, security, surveillance, facial recognition, autonomous vehicle navigation, and collision avoidance.

_____________

MWIR

The difference between MWIR and LWIR is that MWIR has both reflective and emissive properties, whereas LWIR consists primarily of emitted radiation. There are three main advantages of MWIR over the active IR band. First, MWIR imagery can be acquired without any external illumination in day or night environments, while regions in the active IR band might require an external light source. Second, vein patterns (or other anatomical features) not observable in the active IR spectrum can be observable in MWIR. Finally, background clutter in MWIR images is not always visible. For example, the texture of a wall will not usually be visible if it is uniform and has the same surface temperature signature. Thus, when operating in the MWIR band, the tasks of face detection, localization, and segmentation—fundamental processes of typical face recognition systems—are comparatively easier and more reliable than in active IR and visible bands.

_____________

SWIR

SWIR imaging polarimetry has demonstrated significant improvement over conventional imaging for many different mission areas including target detection, discrimination, and tracking in both land and maritime environments. In fact, researchers have applied imaging polarimetry to a number of applications including detection of disturbed earth, objects or swimmers in water, target with background clutter, and objects during thermal cross-over periods. SWIR band polarimetry has been recently applied to these applications as well as discrimination between materials for Identification of Friend or Foe (IFF).  As the utility of SWIR imaging polarimetry is demonstrated in an ever-widening application space, more warfighter program offices are beginning to evaluate the technology for inclusion into their specific platform. The growing application space for SWIR imaging polarimetry is increasing the demand for commercially available products, and Polaris is here to meet that need.     

_____________

Visible

The visible spectrum is any wavelength of light that can be seen, unaided, by the human eye. Visible light cameras are used for general purpose photography and videography, but are only effective when used in well-lit areas. One major advantage of visible light cameras is that because they have been around for much longer than IR cameras they have become much more advanced. Polarization of visible light has several common applications like polarized sunglasses and 3D glasses at the movie theater, but it also has applications in geology, chemistry, astronomy, and other scientific areas.

_____________

Multispectral

Finding objects of interest in a complex, cluttered scene can be challenging when limited to a single waveband. Multispectral Polarimetric Imagers enhance system performance by providing polarization enhanced imagery in multiple wavelengths. The additional sensing modes offered by these multispectral systems provide useful imagery in situations where standard single band imagers fail. Polaris leverages several decades of phenomenology studies and technology developed for the US military, government labs, small businesses, university researchers and large prime contractors to produce Multispectral Polarimetric Imagers to solve this problem.  Polaris works closely with the customer to design a Multispectral Imaging Polarimeter that provides a multitude of useful sensing modalities in a single highly-integrated system. By selecting the appropriate sensing mode, Multispectral Polarimetric Imagers provide advantages over current thermal imagers in detection/visualization, camouflage detection, image clutter rejection, and imaging in low thermal contrast conditions.

_____________

Hyperspectral

Hyperspectral imaging has applications in a broad range of fields including defense, biomedical imaging, surveillance, quality control, agriculture, atmospheric sciences and others. Polaris has experience developing enhanced hyperspectral imagers through the addition of polarimetric sensing. Polaris has developed user friendly software to analyze and display the inherently complex hyperspectral polarimetric data in an intuitive, user friendly manner. Polaris works closely with the customer to design hyperspectral polarimetric imaging systems tailored to specific sensing needs in a single highly-integrated system.