Single camera color and infrared polarimetric imaging

A vehicle having polarimetric color imaging, comprising:

• an outer body, and
• a polarimetric color imaging system mounted within said vehicle, said polarimetric imaging system comprising:
• a single common aperture, wherein said system operates exclusively on received light collected through said single common aperture, said received radiation comprising color band signals and near infrared (IR) band light;
• a color filter array comprising a plurality of red (R), green (G), and blue (B) filter elements in a path of said received light;
• a linear polarizer array comprising a plurality of polarization filter elements that provide a plurality of different polarization orientations optically aligned with respective ones of said R, G and B filter elements;
• a single common pixel array comprising a plurality of photodetector pixels for transducing said color band light and said near IR band light after processing by said color filter array and said linear polarizer array into electrical signals, respective ones of said plurality photodetector pixels optically aligned with said plurality of R, G and B filter elements and said plurality of polarization filter elements;
• a band select switching device in a path of said received light for switching between transmitting exclusively said near IR band light and said color band or color band comprising light, and
• a signal processor coupled to receive and process said electrical signals exclusively from said single common pixel array, said signal processor generating color image data from said color band or said color band comprising light during first time intervals and polarimetric image data exclusively from said near IR band light during second time intervals that do not overlap with said first time intervals and color image data from said color band or said color band comprising light.

A method of polarimetric color imaging, comprising:

• receiving naturally occurring light emanating from at least one object through a single common aperture, said natural light comprising color band light and near infrared (IR) band light;
• switching between exclusively transmitting said near IR band light and said color band light or color band comprising light as a transmitted signal;
• array processing said transmitted signal comprising said color band light or said color band comprising light during first time intervals and exclusively said near IR band light during second time intervals that do not overlap with said first time intervals,
• wherein said array processing of said transmitted signal comprises:
• polarization filtering using a plurality of different polarization filter orientations that are spatially partitioned;
• color bandpass filtering comprising spatially partitioned red (R), green (G), and blue (B) filtering, and
• sensing said transmitted signal using a single common pixel array comprising a plurality of photodetector pixels following said polarization filtering and said color bandpass filtering to generate a plurality of electrical sensing signals, and
• forming a polarimetric color image from said plurality of electrical sensing signals, a polarimetric portion of said polarimetric color image generated exclusively from said near IR band light obtained during said second time intervals and a color portion of said polarimetric color image generated from said color band or said color band comprising light obtained during said first time intervals.