Russian firm creating new UAV sensor technologies

A Russian company is creating new payloads for unmanned aerial vehicles to improve surveillance using the spectral radiation emitted by objects.

Rostec, the Russian holding company, identified the company as United Instrument Manufacturing Corporation, or UIMC.

“The technology we created can process hyperspectral data streams, leading to the creation of an ‘all-seeing eye’ that allows our drones to look beyond the usual boundaries of the human eye’s electromagnetic spectrum,” Rostec quoted Sergey Skokov, deputy chied executive officer of UIMC.

Skokov said the equipment can identify anything in its field of view. It not only assembles pixels to form a picture but pixels with a unique spectrum.

“This technology can also distinguish natural from man-made objects, such as camouflage nets from real grass, or fake from real element,” according to UIMC.

The system can automatically detect military equipment, including camouflaged and hidden objects and independently identify targets using a database of hyperspectral characteristics of different objects and materials.

The technology also has civilian uses — assessing the state of forests, their species composition, or to measure the effects of wildfires and pests, for example.