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18 Feb 16. FLIR Systems to Power the New Cat S60, the World’s First Thermal Imaging Smartphone. FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: FLIR) announced that Bullitt Group, a leading manufacturer of ruggedized smartphones, will integrate FLIR’s Lepton® microcamera in the new Cat S60, creating the world’s first thermal imaging smartphone. The Cat S60 smartphone, part of the extensive Cat Phones lineup of ruggedized handsets, is the latest consumer product to feature FLIR’s thermal imaging technology and will be unveiled at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, Spain.
Leveraging FLIR’s Lepton core, the world’s smallest, lightest, and lowest cost microbolometer-based thermal imaging camera, the Android-based Cat S60 smartphone expands the capabilities of a smartphone. With the ability to see in total darkness and visualize heat that is invisible to the naked eye, the Cat S60 allows users to measure surface temperature from a distance, detect heat loss around doors and windows, spot moisture and missing insulation, making it the ideal smartphone for building professionals, electricians, and first responders. The Cat S60 also takes advantage of FLIR’s patented MSX technology, which embosses details from visible imagery onto thermal images, offering users more detailed and higher quality thermal imagery.
“We’re excited to partner with Bullitt to create the world’s first smartphone with integrated thermal imaging,” said Andy Teich, President and CEO of FLIR. “FLIR has pioneered significant reductions in size, weight, power, and cost of thermal cameras and the Cat S60 represents yet another application for our technology and offers it to new groups of users.”
“To stand out from the crowd in today’s smartphone market requires true innovation and we are proud to partner with FLIR to announce what is truly a world’s first,” said Peter Stephens, CEO Bullitt Group, global licensee for Caterpillar. “The Cat S60 represents a milestone for smartphones. We are excited for thermal technology to be in the hands of Cat phones’ customers and to discover the myriad of daily time and efficiency use cases it will present for them.” (Source: Yahoo!/Marketwired)
18 Feb 16. Asian countries eye stronger maritime surveillance capabilities. The market for spy planes and surveillance platforms is buoyant in Southeast Asia, where countries are facing off against China – and each other – in the resource-rich South China Sea, industry insiders at the Singapore Airshow said.
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam have all been seeking information from suppliers, trade sources said, as maritime patrol aircraft and intelligence gathering platforms become more of a priority.
Some of the kit is needed for traditional activities such as counter-piracy, fisheries protection or disaster response, but China’s growing assertiveness in the region’s seas is looming increasingly large in the thinking of defense planners.
“They did not know that China was building artificial islands,” said one industry source who regularly talks to the region’s navies. “They did not know that it had built a runway or put in missile launchers. They want to fix this.”
China has been building runways and other infrastructure on islands it controls in the South China Sea, where it has a series of overlapping territorial claims with its neighbors.
The rising tensions in the region are fuelling demand for advanced radars, sensors and other equipment known in defense jargon as “ISR” – intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
“People don’t trust their neighbors, resource and territory claims require a keen knowledge of what the other guy is going, and military operations other than war demand strong situational awareness,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice-president of analysis at Teal Group, a U.S.-based aerospace consultancy.