NON-SCANNING INTEGRATED OPOTICAL SYSTEM WITH WIDE FIELD OF VIEW SEARCH CAPABILITY

Very wide field of view optical surveillance is realized without scanning or moving parts by means of an integrated multiaperture optical system. The system utilizes light gathering optics in the form of an array of eyelets or lens apertures that direct in-coming light onto a detector layer. The detection layer consists of individual detectors, more than one to a lens. Under the detector layer there is a correlation layer, which contains a memory cell for each detector and circuitry which connects to neighboring memory cells according to a hard wired program. Below the correlation layer is a processing layer which contains microprocessor circuitry allowing further processing of the acquired information. Outlines of objects seen by the system are defined by the microprocessor circuitry using an edge detecting routine. A detected object is identified by correlation with a single number recognition coefficient. The microprocessor circuit includes a memory matrix in which is stored recognition coefficient for objects of interest. The lens aperture can be configured to form either apposition or neural superportion images and algorithms for processing information obtained by both modes of operation are developed. The data processing circuitry is implemented by means of large scale integrated circuit technology whereby the memories in the correlation layer are physically located directly below their associated detectors.