Possible remote thermal finder?

* * * * Alan

My guess (possibly wrong) is the biggest value of a remote thermal
detector, at least at first, will be sort of a short-range "thermal
centering aid". *Knowing there is strong core 300 meters away is
"highly actionable" data. * Cruising along while searching a 1 km wide
path will eliminate passing close by a strong thermal without knowing
about it. *Knowing there is a thermal 10 km away is interesting but
it's a good bet it will dissipate before you can get there and chasing
after it may not be the best strategy.

The next biggest value will be that even 1 km range thermal detectors
will eliminate the start gate roulette, gaggling and leeching in
contests. Why go through all that when you can reliably find the
thermals on your own?

That is, after the first guy to bring one destroys the competition at
the world championships! ..

In addition to camera signal processing to see light refraction, same
to see birds/gliders, lidar to see dust concentration, doppler lidar
to see dust movements, active or passive (listen to weather/FAA) radar
to see bugs, birds, and gliders, infrared to see moisture
concentration, infra red to see heat, would all work. Most of these
are used now in ground-based or large aircraft form for various other
purposes -- doppler lidar to study storms pollution plumes and wind
profilers, bird/bug radar to study former, FLIR in the military,
They need only a bit of miniaturization. Lots of winter projects for
the technically inclined!

More speculation on thermal detectors:

http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john..._detectors.mht
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john...s/barnaby.html

John Cochrane

bildan wrote:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/on...photo-lens-spo
ts-clear-air.html

Crap - they almost stole my idea! ;-)

Seriously though, I had been thinking of using a normal video camera with
changing focus to check for dust sparkle at different ranges and do frame
comparisons. Take two (or more) snapshots at each focus range. Subtract out
image from previous focus range (trying to eliminate the roughly constant
out of focus "blur" of the background) to leave only spots in the new focus
range that are likely to be dust particles. Do this at least twice, waiting
some time T between frames. Use a heuristic to pair up pixels that appear
to represent the same particle in both frames but have moved. Compute speed
of movement of particles based on focus range, time T, and subtended arc
the particles appear to have moved. You now have an estimate for wind
speeds and directions normal to your view line at that distance.

The above doesn't appear to be what Boeing has in mind; they appear to be
using distortions of the distant background itself.

On Jan 21, 4:36*pm, Jim Logajan wrote:
bildan wrote:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/on...photo-lens-spo
ts-clear-air.html

Crap - they almost stole my idea! ;-)

Seriously though, I had been thinking of using a normal video camera with
changing focus to check for dust sparkle at different ranges and do frame
comparisons. Take two (or more) snapshots at each focus range. Subtract out
image from previous focus range (trying to eliminate the roughly constant
out of focus "blur" of the background) to leave only spots in the new focus
range that are likely to be dust particles. Do this at least twice, waiting
some time T between frames. Use a heuristic to pair up pixels that appear
to represent the same particle in both frames but have moved. Compute speed
of movement of particles based on focus range, time T, and subtended arc
the particles appear to have moved. You now have an estimate for wind
speeds and directions normal to your view line at that distance.

The above doesn't appear to be what Boeing has in mind; they appear to be
using distortions of the distant background itself.

My impression,(could be wrong) is that they are using a sharp horizon
line to look for distortions due to air density variations. If so,
that shouldn't be a problem in the clearer air of the west since we
fly in daylight hours below cloudbase. It appears to use only a
standard high resolution camera and some heavy image processing
software.