The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is slated to issue a solicitation to seek input on the capacity of ambient thermal emissions to house information in a move to enable active illumination at night.
DARPA said Friday that it aims to develop passive 3D sensors and algorithms that will employ data from thermal emissions through the Invisible Headlights program. Joe Altepeter, a program manager at DARPA's Defense Sciences office, said the agency eyes to build passive navigation capacities within pitch dark environments.
“In the depths of a cave or in the dark of a moonless, starless night with dense fog, current autonomous systems can’t make sense of the environment without radiating some signal—whether it’s a laser pulse, radar or visible light beam—all of which we want to avoid," added Altepeter.
DARPA will host a webcast and proposer's day on March 16 to discuss more details in line with the project.