General

Teledyne Acquiring Flir (World Leader in Thermal Camera world) is an old news, but most probably, its a significant milestone in Thermal Camera industry. While low cost Chinese made thermal cameras have becoming popular, but after COVID19, many countries have stressing to buy thermal camera products made in Western countries.

COVID19 has also created a niche market where combining thermal camera and visual camera made an useful solution. While ther have been other application where both thermal and visual cameras were used, like in surveillance, this was the first time image processing and thermal camera have been combined to make a solution. Teledyne, visual camera and image processing company with intersts in many industries, acquiring the largest thermal camera company seems to be a natural progression for both Teledyne and Flir. Together, they could most probably, make very robust and useful solutions by combining thermal imagery and image processing software to solve many real world problems.

Surveliance and military applications of thermal camera may see huge technical improvements in coming days. We should hope for some solution which will combine various technologies like RADAR, Thermal camera, Machine Learning and wireless communication. These solutions could be useful in industrial as well as security & syrveillance as well as military applications.