On Monday (11), the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced that it is working on a new design of night vision goggles. The main objective of the change is to bring a more modern, light and comfortable aspect, in order to provide more comfort for the American combatants.
The current night vision goggles (or NVG, as they are known in the acronym in English) are robust equipment connected to the combatants’ helmets. Its size is justified by the limited technology of its development, which began in 1935 in Germany and has since received only minor updates. The current design requires a set of several overlapping lenses and, thus, renewing the use of just one traditional lens, like ordinary glasses, has become a challenge for decades.
However, recent scientific advances by DARPA can overcome this challenge. Using a new type of direct conversion from the infrared light spectrum to the visible light spectrum, the scientists were able to reduce the number of lenses needed for this purpose and thus eliminated much of the device’s weight.
According to Rohith Chandrasekar, manager of DARPA’s Department of Defense Sciences, the current equipment would be causing severe pain in the combatants’ neck region, due to the long time of use and its lack of ergonomics. He explains, in a press release, the soldiers’ experience: “imagine wearing a baseball cap all day with a two-pound weight attached to the front,” he comments.
Chandrasekar believes that simplifying the process of converting light spectra will also improve the efficiency of the device. According to him, the new process can “conserve photon moment” and thus, in theory, allow night vision without the need for “any type of optics”.
