O'Gara Group CTO Bill Parker has a wish list for turning night-vision goggles into fully featured information platforms:

1 A display chip that has resolution as fine as that of the human eye and runs on one AA battery for 24 hours. "The best displays we have now are equivalent to about a million pixels, which is half the amount that the human eye has in its most sensitive area," Parker said. "Organic light-emitting diode and liquid-crystal display chips [eMagin, Holoeye and Kopin] are approaching our display requirements. In addi- tion, we need very lightweight drivers for the display that can operate on low power: Every watt of power adds 4.5 ounces to the weight that a soldier must carry during a six- hour mission."

2 A night-vision-capable imaging chip. "Several technologies are in development for low-light-level imaging: Intevac Corp. and Fairchild Imaging each have a method for achieving performance similar to a high-end night-vision tube, although at lower resolution," Parker said. "For some applications, digital processing of the picture alone can increase the capabilities of a chip over that of a tube, particularly where it's used to remove the bright light glare or 'halo' that can block out scene elements. Hybrid designs incorporating either CCD or CMOS imager chips into the intensifier reduce tube size and provide a video or digital output directly to electronics."

3 A low-power image-processing engine for fusion of digital sources. "Combining video, thermal, night vision, GPS and computer-generated images at the same time is a very daunting task," said Parker. "The challenge is further complicated by the fact that a night-vision goggle user's needs change from minute to minute during a mission. We have recently identified a commercially available processor, and with some customization, it may be able to supply image processing for our beta unit."