What is HUNRAI?

HUNRAI stands for "High Utility Non-Refractive Algorithmic Imaging"

HUNRAI is a self-calibrating, non-refractive, algorithmic imaging camera that enhances the effectiveness and sensitivity of optical imaging in both the visible regime and multi-spectral ranges.

Limitations of traditional lensed cameras

Many missions require object identification in degraded or harsh environments, where lensed cameras – even ones with micro-lenses – have trouble maintaining focus and frequently cannot form a usable image.

Traditional lensed cameras are big, heavy, and expensive. High-speed, high-resolution optical imaging in the visible regime has been around for a while but is expensive, entails meticulous calibration of the camera’s settings, and requires controlled-stable operating conditions. In both military and commercial applications, the synergistic combination of high-fidelity optics and efficient algorithmic image processing typically results in sharp images that are utilized for interpretation, annotation and classification tasks. This performance however is prone to a number of shortcomings:

1. Limited depth of field
2. Long exposure times
3. Lack of scalability
4. Restricted image capture agility based on pre-set general camera range
5. Known and pre-adjusted for environmental conditions or image disturbances
6. Inefficient decoupled image acquisition and image processing

The conventional acquisition cycle is a pre-calibrated open loop system optimized a priori, based on a default scene or a probabilistic scenario, without any feedback from the actual data or even the imaging algorithms hindering optimized image performance for a particular task/scene. To resolve these limitations, the image acquisition hardware needs to be redesigned to be adjustable with its adjustability based on a principled method that optimizes the hardware configuration based on prior information with feedback from real data in a fully unsupervised fashion.

HUNRAI solution

HUNRAI hardware overcomes not only the size, weight, and power (SWaP) but also the harsh environment limitations of lensed cameras. The HUNRAI algorithm-based imaging also removes the restrictive, intensive, and decoupled image post-processing of traditional cameras.