CEDRAT TECHNOLOGIES (CTEC) designs, manufactures and continuously improves high-performance mechatronic products for the defense market. Our portfolio includes Fast Steering Mirrors (FSM), XY positioning stages and compact controllers engineered to operate in harsh environments.
These solutions are used in demanding applications such as Line of Sight Stabilization for beam wander cancellation of High Energy Laser (HEL/DEW) as well as for improving Narrow Field of View image quality of Electro Optic Systems (EOS), microscanning and dithering (pixel shift) function for image resolution enhancement (super-resolution imaging) of camera, back scanning for anti-blurring image processing.
To meet specific customer requirements, CTEC also develops piezoelectric and magnetic mechanisms with dedicated embedded electronics and mirrors on demand.
Micro-scanning, Dithering or Pixel shifting is a technique which increases the true resolution of a detector (CCD, CMOS, FPA, etc…) by moving a focal lens or the detector itself by fractions of a pixel in the x- and y-directions. The main customer benefit is to enhance the resolution of their existing detector at a much lower cost than buying a twice higher resolution detector. Depending on the optical configuration and the detector type of the customer camera or electro optic system, CTEC can develop either embedded XY or Tip Tilt stages with their related controllers to move respectively a focal lens, a detector or a mirror.
Image stabilization (IS) is a family of techniques used to reduce blurring associated with the motion of a camera during exposure. Usual electro-optic systems are embedded inside Gimbal which perform a coarse stabilization. Specifically, it compensates for pan and tilt (angular movement, equivalent to yaw and pitch) of a camera or other imaging device. Nevertheless, the remaining micro vibrations inside the Gimbal generates blurry images from high resolution (small pixel) detectors during exposure time in narrow field of view (FoV).
