The concept of the FireLidar™ system is shown schematically. The FireLidar™ unit is carried in a backpack or is hand-held, and consists of a diode laser transmitter, an ultra-narrowband optical filter and sensitive imaging camera. The operating principle behind the

system is quite similar to the ocean water and atmospheric lidar systems currently under development by the DOD. The laser transmitter illuminates the target. Some portion of the laser light is reflected back from the target and is seen on the imaging detector. A key aspect of this system is the ultra-narrowband optical filter that only allows the reflected laser light through and rejects all of the other intense light from the flame itself. In this manner, the flame will "disappear" or be blocked and only the illuminated scene behind the flame will be visible to the camera. The system has been designed and built at a wavelength where the human eye is the least sensitive. This wavelength allows the FireLidar™ system to be built with high transmitted optical power, which increases the image contrast and sensitivity of the system, while still being safe to the human eye.

These simultaneous frames from an outdoor test fire show an image clearly visible behind the fire when seen with the FireLidar device (right), but only flame and smoke are shown with a standard (visible spectrum) camera (left).

The second set of movies show the effectiveness of FireLidar™ in a contained fire environment. Again, the image on the left shows only smoke and flames, while the image on the right, taken with FireLidar™, clearly shows the fireman moving around.

Play the Informational Video



Patent: 6,724,467 ìSystem For Viewing Objects At A Fire Scene And Method Of Useî

Phone: 610-499-7529