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2009 Technical Reports

Report on Selected Issues Related to NVG Use in a Canadian Security Context

Muna Shabaneh, Pearl Guterman, James Zacher, Yuichi Sakano and Robert S. Allison

Technical Report CSE-2009-07

York University

October 1 2009

Abstract

Police and border security operations are an important and growing application of night vision devices (NVDs). NVDs improve visibility at night but suffer from a variety of perceptual artifacts and human factors issues. In a series of helicopter-based flight trials we analyzed subject performance on model tasks based on typical security applications. Subjects performed the tasks under conditions of unaided daytime vision, unaided nighttime vision or image intensified nighttime vision. The tasks included directed search over open and forested terrain, detection and identification of a temporary landing zone and search/tracking of a moving vehicle marked with a covert IR marker. The results of this study confirm that NVDs can provide significant operational value but also illustrate the limitations of the technology. We also describe a prototype augmented vision system to aid in night time search developed as an MSc project under this ETech project. ETech Grant RM05SEC02: Assessing Image Intensifier Integration in Security and Emergency Response

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