Nikkei Tech publishes quite a controversial story on the new Sharp technology: Sharp has developed a camera that colorizes NIR nighttime video and exhibited it at Ceatec Japan on Oct. 7-11, 2014. The company plans to commercialize it in a monitoring camera in November 2014, and to use it in automotive camera later on. The camera color filter "separates near-infrared light into red, green and blue lights. The filter is not made of an organic material but an inorganic material."
The near-infrared LEDs emit light to a distance of 5 to 10m. The reflected light passes through the lens and the newly-developed filter to a Sharp CCD and then used to produce a color image. No further technology details are reported.
According to their announcement in Japanese, this seems to be based on a method developed by AIST: http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/latest_research/2013/20130201/20130201.html (AIST press release in Japanese: http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_j/press_release/pr2014/pr20140514/pr20140514.html )
ReplyDeleteTricolor IR imaging with visual bayer filters swapped for IR counterparts ? :)
ReplyDeleteFor mono cameras Astrodon and Hutech make such RGB filters for astrophotography.