This Tiny No-Contact Thermal Camera with Near-Eye Micro-OLED Display Scans for COVID-19 Infections
Designed for one-handed use in-the-field, this compact thermal camera uses a 0.19" OLED display drawing just 5mW.
The lengthily-named Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP (Fraunhofer FEP) has developed a prototype thermal camera system with integrated micro-display — designed for contactless screening of potential COVID-19 infections.
"We have drawn on our many years of know-how in OLED [Organic Light-Emitting Diode]-on-silicon technology and IC [Integrated Circuit] design for this monitoring system for contactless temperature screening," explains developer Judith Baumgarten. "The basis of the system is a tiny OLED microdisplay, which is extremely power-efficient due to its intelligent backplane architecture and is used to visualize the data. We combined the display with an infrared sensor to create a thermal imaging camera that both measures body temperature and displays the result directly via a near-to-eye visualization."
Developed as part of the European Commission's INNO4COV-19 project, which sought to find potential commercializable products that could help combat COVID-19, Fraunhofer FEP's prototype gadget is a compact handheld that uses an uncooled thermal camera to take contactless temperature readings, which are visualized on a 320×240 0.19" micro-OLED display panel. A lens in front of the compact display allows the viewer to bring the device up to their eye to see the full image — and determine whether a person may be running a fever and thus showing signs of infection.
According to Fraunhofer FEP's testing, the gadget — whose components measure just 3×2cm² (around 1.2×0.8"²) and are less than 5mm (around 0.2") thick — draws just 5mW for the display, making it ideal for field use where it should be able to operate for a long time between charges. The company is also investigating taking the core components and deploying them more broadly including in smart glasses, headgear, caps, face shields, and other personal protective equipment (PPE) with applications in disaster relief, firefighting, and even fault diagnosis in industrial environments.
The company is planning to present the prototype at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January, and promises to "provide an overview about possible evaluation kits for testing" — but has thus far remained silent on commercial availability.