Compact hyperspectral camera in the mid-infrared for small UAVs

Hyperspectral imaging from small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) arouses a growing interest, as well for military applications as for civilian applications like agriculture management, pollution monitoring or mining. This paper establishes a quick state of the art of cameras of which the capabilities in small-UAVs embedded campaigns have been demonstrated. We also introduce a novel compact hyperspectral camera operating in mid-infrared spectral range embeddable on small UAVs. This camera combines birefringent interferometer for size reduction and cooled imaging optics for a better signal noise ratio. The design of a first prototype and first results from a ground-based measurement campaign, of which the goal was an optical concept validation, is also discussed. Finally, we present the design modifications for the small-UAVs-embeddable version.