Applications

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Agriculture
Defense and Security
Remote Sensing
Life Sciences
Solar Power and Construction
Aerospace and Astronomy
Machine Vision

Agriculture

Crop monitoring for nutrients, water-stress, disease, insect attack and overall plant health is a vital aspect of successful agricultural operations. Traditionally this has been carried out by visual examination of crops on the ground or sometimes from the air. However these methods are limited by the ability of the human eye to discriminate between healthy foliage and foliage suffering various kinds of stress.

Read how Hyperspectral Imaging Can Assist in Crop Monitoring for Precision Agriculture

Defense and Security

Several military applications require the use of paints, coatings and materials that have certain reflectance, transmittance, or scattering requirements. Also, many of these materials have thermal properties requirements, lest they become easy targets for infrared (IR) guided weapons. In addition, the materials utilized on missiles (tactical, theatre, and ballistic) must be detectable by the wide range of sensors used by the U.S. and allied nations.

The MS division has over 3 decades of experience supporting various missile defense applications. SOC’s Measurement Services’s BRDF capabilities is un-matched in this industry ,and allows for detailed mappings of the scatter from various materials that are commonly used in missile construction and operation. By knowing the BRDF profile of a material, missile defense operations can discriminate between actual, intended targets and possible decoy materials.

Remote Sensing

Ground Truth
Mineral Mapping

Life Sciences

As research institutions seek to expand society’s understanding of the natural world, the government and private-sector look to deliver biotechnological advancements for medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and environmental uses. A vast array of life and earth science applications can benefit from the data characterization offered by modern spectral imaging techniques. Surface Optics has supported many researchers in identifying spectral properties of various surfaces in their area of study.

A sampling of life and earth science studies where Surface Optics technology is assisting researchers to find solutions:

Solar Power and Construction

Measurements of Optical Constants of Surfaces in the Infrared Spectral Region
Radiation Heat Transfer
Thermal Barriers Evaluation
Mirror Reflectance
Green Building Inspections

Aerospace & Astronomy

The Aerospace industry uses many different materials that require optimal performance across a broad spectrum of applications. Satellite mirrors need to have optimal reflectance and scattering qualities in order to function properly. Aircraft and satellite paints and specialized coatings need to be tailored to be not only durable and resistant to the elements over a long period of time but to also have excellent thermal qualities to ensure proper function.The Measurement Services (MS) division can perform the requisite optical properties measurements to determine these qualities.

The Coatings division has the capability of applying durable coatings on composite and/or plastic materials, and meets the simultaneous requirements for RF performance, thermal control (a/e), and scatter. SOC’s coating laboratory is fully equipped to provide for the most stringent coating needs with adjacent measurement facilities to confirm coating specifications have been satisfied. SOC also manufactures thermal/signature control paints using optimization capability of SOC’s ScatCad analysis tools for pigment design and the laboratory instrumentation for database development and coating verification. Typical applications for this type of coating are for signature/thermal control of ground-based and airborne vehicles.

Machine Vision

Sorting of Automotive Electronics & Plastics
Web and Surface Inspection
Chemical Analysis