SWFOVS is a U.S. Navy / NAVSEA Phase I SBIR effort (Phase I complete), with Paladin’s Alwyn V. Smith III, P.E., serving as Principal Investigator. Sensors that perform well on a static bench often degrade sharply once they are mounted on a moving, vibrating, or maritime platform. This effort addressed precision sensor stabilization — keeping wide-field-of-view imaging useful in dynamic, real-world operating environments.

Note: Some details have been altered, obscured, or sanitized to safeguard operational security and proprietary methods.

Project Description

Our stabilized-optics work combines wide-field-of-view imaging, motion compensation, and optical/electro-optical stabilization concepts to preserve sensor performance under platform motion. The goal is imagery and detection performance that holds up in the conditions where the system actually has to operate — shipboard, airborne, and other motion-heavy environments — rather than only under laboratory conditions.

Capabilities Demonstrated

The effort drew on Paladin’s core competency in gyro-stabilized, gimbaled multi-sensor platforms with GPS/IMU fusion, applied to the demanding problem of wide-FOV motion-stabilized imaging — directly relevant to stabilized EO/IR payloads, maritime sensing, and ruggedized optical systems.