Matrix Cam Spies Flying Bullets

An Air Force contractor has developed the first high-speed camera that can follow speeding bullets midflight. It may lead to "active armor" that intercepts speeding rounds out of the air, or personal-protection devices that deflect incoming bullets with rapidly inflating Kevlar air bags.

Developed for the Air Force's Munitions Directorate by Nova Sensors of Solvang, California, the Variable Acuity Superpixel Technology system, or VAST, can also track anything slower than a bullet -- which is pretty much everything -- and is likely to find many other applications, from traffic management to robot vision.

"This is truly breakthrough technology in terms of new capabilities for infrared focal plane arrays," says Mark Massie, president of Nova Sensors.

Nova Sensors' system includes software that mimics the fovea in human and animal eyes. The fovea is the dense region of light receptors at the center of the eye used for detailed vision: reading, driving a car or examining objects closely.