The Design Of The Imaging System For The Search Of Distressed Targets On Sea Surface

With the development of our country’s maritime transport and tourism industry in recent years, the maritime accident occurs frequently, which caused great property loss and casualties. Maritime distress accident occurs mostly in night and fog which is the bad weather, the rescue helicopter searching distress targets mainly rely on original search tools such as eyes and telescope not only wastes time, but also is inefficient. In order to solve this problem, radar detection technology, glimmer night vision technology, visible light imaging technology and infrared imaging technology have been applied to the search. Infrared imaging technology working in 24 hours and visible imaging technology working in good weather during the day are best choices, but available image information in single band is relatively small, which results low discrimination. Today multi-fusion technologies develops very rapidly, so combining mid-wave infrared, long-wave infrared and visible light together is good choice for searching distress targets on the sea.This topic originates from Ministry of Transport’s construction science and technology project "The key technology and demonstration to improve the helicopter rescue ability in bad sea condition", which is to develop an airborne imaging system with long distance, multi band and high resolution to find distress targets in an emergency in quick time, it also can work in 24 hours. In order to complete the design of the imaging system for the search of distress target in sea surface, this paper completed the following work:first, relying on the parameters required in the project task book, we complete the system design of the mid-wave infrared and long-wave infrared, at the same time, we select visible light camera, together the three systems are integrated in the optical stable platform, also the stability of the whole hardware platform is tested. Second, we analyse the reasons of blind pixel element and non-uniformity in system of the mid-wave infrared and long-wave infrared, we also put forward the corresponding solution and verification is performed in hardware system. Third, in order to meet actual demand for the project, we develops a set of integrated software system, it can connect mid-wave infrared camera, long-wave infrared camera and visible light camera, also, it can collect, process, display and store the corresponding image. The software ensures the system real-time performance and stability.Eventually to verify the performance of hardware and software designed for the system, at the seaside we conducted experiments, experimental results show that the system hardware indicators meet the design requirements and operation of the corresponding software system is stable and reliable.