Super Headlights: Superconducting Nanowire Detectors for Passive Infrared Sensing

CISE Faculty Affiliate Professor Vivek Goyal (ECE) received a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) subaward for his work in connection with the agency’s Invisible Headlights program. Professor Goyal is working under an award to MIT entitled, “Super Headlights: Superconducting Nanowire Detectors for Passive Infrared Sensing.” 

The DARPA Invisible Headlights program has a very ambitious goal—to utilize thermal emissions as a primary data source for autonomous vehicle navigation. Using passive thermal emissions to navigate an unmanned vehicle has never been done before, and it is being attempted by Professor Goyal’s group in coordination with a team of researchers from MIT and several other institutions.

The BU team, led by Goyal, will focus on the development of data processing, modelling, and theory for the project. Karl Berggren, Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT, leads the overall team and will focus on hardware, specifically the creation of the single-photon detectors needed to recognize these passive thermal emissions.

The sensors that the project will utilize must be able to sense longwave infrared light that is far beyond human perception. The sensors will have high spectral sensitivity, allowing them to recognize a wide range of light spectra. Sensors like this would have the ability to extract material properties, how much air the light has gone through to reach the vehicle, and properties of that air. 

Learn more here.

Related story here.