Our research is to develop inconspicuous, multifunctional and highly sensitive sensors as well as lightweight "smart skin" attachable to officers' uniforms, providing unobtrusive image and video data. Leveraging upon our research at UTA's Nanofab research center, we are designing and fabricating inconspicuous, light-weight and non-obtrusive infra-red sensors. These sensors, which are attachable to human body and other surfaces, will enable to build portable surveillance, weapon detection and other projects (such as, wearable head mounted cameras). The sensors can be custom made to be interlaced into a fabric (like a police uniform) or be a part of a flexible substrate such as Kapton™ used as "skin" on a robotic surveillance device. These sensors can be made inconspicuous as a part of a wallpaper or a piece of furniture. This is a highly useful feature, which overcomes the bulky nature of commercial sensors by attaching our own lightweight sensors to officers' uniforms.

 


YBaCuO microbolometer array
fabricated on a flexible Kapton
substrate, shown bent in hand.


Micromachined YBaCuO microbolometer array
fabricated on a spin-on polyimide substrate
(liquid Kapton). The pixels are suspended ~2m
above the substrate.



An instance of "Smart Skin": Multiple array
of IR sensors on Kapton plastic substrate.
Our aim is to cover a part of the police car
exterior with this for IR imaging.

 

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