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Seeing Color in the Night
Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'Things that show color in the night,' the Boston Globe reports that a company named Tenebraex is helping color blind people to travel. But it's also developing goggles to help soldiers and physicians to see all colors at night, and not only the green color of current night vision systems. These goggles, which should become available this summer, will be sold for about $6,000 to the Army. But as states one of the founders of the company, with monochrome night vision, 'blood is the same color as water.' So these expensive night vision devices might be more targeted to Army physicians than to regular soldiers."
but we knew that from reading who the submitter is
anyway here is the product page from Tenebraex
http://camouflage.com/colornightvision.php
Will adding color help with depth perception? It's one of the big issues with current night vision.
Developers: We can use your help.
There are some non-gun-toting people who need to operate in a stealthy or semi-stealthy manner that would make use of this sort of thing. Think of the National Geographic-types that are setting up a pre-dawn shoot and trying to remain less visible, or the guys working on a forward helicopter refueling station who definitely prefer to be harder to see and definitely want to know the difference between stepping in a puddle of water and a puddle of hydraulic fluid.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
How about some of these color nightvision goggles fitted with the bat ears that allow human echolocation?
Those kinds of sense boosters could make night, with less distractions away from the target, the most effective time to purse targets.
--
make install -not war
I have color blindness, but I can still see colors. Most color blind people can see colors, they simply have trouble distinguishing one color from the other, particularly when they are close... For instance, I have no trouble telling the difference between a red light and a green light, and I have no trouble distinguishing the colors on a weather map. But ask me to identify a particular color as pink or purple, and I can see the color as either or both at the same time. That's why I can't see the damn number on the test page! Most color blind people do not see in Monochrome, as it would seem that most of the non-color-blind world tends to believe. For more info, check out the wikipedia entry...
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
The non-gun-toting people are not as interesting. Besides, I do not condone the voyeurism of animals.
Nope. Green-vision systems work on light-amplification principles. Infrared is a different technology that's more useful in tracking than it is as generic night-vision.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I wonder how this device works. There's no information about it at Tenebraex's website, so it doesn't say. I know that in basic biology you learn that eyes are made up of rods and cones. Rods distinguish light and dark and cones distinguish color. Cones don't work very well in the dark. Rods do. So we can't "see" color as well in the dark. It's interesting that this is both a biological and a technological problem.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
There are three main technologies used for night vision in military equipment:
;)
1) Active IR: This is the old-style IR spotlight. This uses a just-below-visible IR spotlight and an IR-sensitive optical device (usually a driving periscope) Despite being IR-based, it is fairly narrowband and so isn't sensitive to heat - it is more like an "invisible spotlight". Not used much anymore.
2) Image Intensifiers (aka "Starlight"): This is the technology behind "night vision goggles" or NVGs for short. They magnify the available light. They are also slightly sensitive to near-IR, so you can see IR-based LEDs, stobes, glowsticks etc - wearing one, you can see the IR LED flash in a TV remote control. The older Gen 1 goggles used an element for each eye, so you had grainy binocular vision. Newer systems from Gen II to Gen IV give an increasingly sharper and clearer picture, but tend to be monocular, so no depth perception - and I've seen some pretty funny things happen because of it. These don't see heat either.
3) Thermal Imagers (aka TI): These are heat-sensitive, and can see through most smokes. These are much larger units, and are usually used as part of vehicle weapon system sights or dedicated surveillance equipment (NOD-IR) Most modern tanks have them, LAV-25s and Bradleys have them, and there are manpack versions to use in an OP - but you won't be bolting these to your helmet anytime soon.
Up close, these can see through clothing. Don't ask how I know this.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
These goggles, which should become available this summer, will be sold for about $6,000 to the Army.
And sold to consumers at Best Buy for $49.99 ($45.99 at Amazon).
Paris Hilton should get one and then we wouldn't have to look at the green vids anymore.
I mean, come on folks, this technology has been around for decades: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thum b/1/14/High_power_torch.jpg/250px-High_power_torch .jpg
Once this technology drops to $500 or so, the major use will be for voyeurism. Porn drives the internet.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
No. Ronald Piquepaille has mended his ways. The story links straight to the relevant article and not to his blog. The last few stories from him have done the same. It's time to declare victory and move on to some other gripe.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I've come to understand that seeing in only one/two color(s) (ie black and white, nightvision, etc) helps see movement a LOT easiar, which is why many predators have black and white vision. If I were a soldier on the field at night, I'd prefer to keep my nightvision on as a default, but I'm sure it would be useful for them to see in colors for a brief moment to determine what it is they are looking at (such as water and blood). But to always see in color at night might actually inhibit a soldier's ability.
This reminds me of a question my Grandfather posed to me when I was young (30+ yrs ago). When the lights are out, can you not see colors (objects) because it is dark or because they don't have any color w/o light shining on them, a bit like "does a tree falling make noise if no one is there to hear it". I haven't thought of this in a while, I am sure there is a scientific answer, I would guess the prior, the characteristics that make an object a certain color are still there when the lights are out.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
You can't actually believe what you're saying, can you?
The US armed forces are the most highly equipped fighting forces in the history of the world. I mean, for chrissake, the crux of your argument is that the army is "cheap ass" because it only supplies monocular NIGHT VISION GOGGLES to its GIs. This is about as relevant as complaining that the Army is cheap because they only hand out Core-Solo notebooks to users instead of Core-Duo notebooks.
Do we have a perfect military? Of course not. But that's what you're complaining about. That they're not perfect. You're complaining because we gave troops body armor, just not enough. You're complaining that there WERE armored humvees and APCs but that not EVERY humvee was armored.
And your comment about medical care? Puh-leese. Our combat hospitals in Iraq have saved thousands and thousands of troops who, if this were Vietnam or even Desert Storm, would have been coming home in a bodybag. We're fighting a war where you can take shrapnel to the brain and LIVE TO TALK ABOUT IT ON NATIONAL TV. You can be in a fully equipped operating room having neurosurgery within 30 minutes of your injury. Brain Surgery. In a combat zone.
Yes, there are side effects to this. The Army has to treat FAR MORE injuries and the emotional stress associated with them. Since the civil war, these people were treated by the battlefield medic. Best case scenario the medic was able to stick them full of enough morphine to put them asleep so they could die in peace. Today, the medic has the equivalent of M*A*S*H in his back pack and within a half hour you're in a combat hospital on an operating table every bit as advanced as world class permanent facilities. Forty-eight hours later you're Stateside or in Europe beginning long term recovery.
So yes, that does mean some overcrowding issues. We're saving so many lives we don't know where to put them all. I don't mean to make light of the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed but go ads some soldiers. Say "Would you rather take shrapnel in Vietnam, stick yourself with your morphine, and if you're lucky, get a syringe of your buddies morphine so you can lay there and bleed out dreaming of the medivac, Or, would you rather take shrapnel in Iraq, be treated by a battlefield medic who will run an IV, treat your pain, and give you blood, as you wait for a medivac to take you to an operating table 20 minutes away before sewing you up and sending you off to lay in a moldy hotel room in surburban Washington DC for a day or two"
What would YOU choose? Obviously having them lay in paradise on craftmatic adjustable hammocks being fed grapes by gorgeous naked nymphomaniacs would be a great third choice, but this is reality. We have constraints to deal with.
That's just how it is. At the end of the day, there are constraints. Even for the military. Even with a half trillion dollar budget. Simply put, what you're asking for will cost more money. How do you propose we pay for it?
You see, it's the Slashdot editors we should be thanking, not Roland in the least. They have (at least twice recently) redacted his go-back-to-my-blog-and-run-up-my-hits self linkage. Thank you, editors!
sigfault (core dumped)