ISR SENSING

Multi-Modal Payload Integration

A unified hardware abstraction layer that ingests heterogeneous sensor data from EO/IR imagers, mmWave radar, and acoustic arrays — without requiring custom integration work per payload vendor.

3

Sensor modalities

HAL

Vendor-agnostic abstraction

120 fps

Max EO/IR ingest rate

0

Vendor lock-in

PAYLOAD COVERAGE

Three modalities. One ingestion layer.

Multi-modal sensor payload for unmanned systems

EO/IR Imaging

Electro-optical and infrared camera payloads. Supports MIPI CSI-2, USB 3.0, and GigE Vision interfaces. Raw frame ingest at up to 120fps with hardware timestamp synchronization. Day and night operation profiles with automatic gain control.

mmWave Radar

76–81 GHz FMCW chirp radar integration. Range, Doppler velocity, and angle-of-arrival processing. Operates in rain, dust, fog, and smoke. RF interference mitigation for contested environments. Detection range up to 200m per chip configuration.

Acoustic Arrays

Multi-element MEMS microphone array integration. Sound event detection, direction of arrival, and passive signature classification. Wind noise and rotor wash cancellation. Detects engine signatures, rotary-wing acoustic profiles, and impulse events.

HARDWARE ABSTRACTION LAYER

Plug in any payload. The stack handles the rest.

The HAL exposes a uniform data contract regardless of physical sensor type. Sensor discovery, configuration, timestamping, and normalization are handled at the HAL boundary — not in the inference pipeline.

sensor_hal.py — payload registration 
# Register heterogeneous payloads under unified HAL
from kstr.hal import SensorRegistry, SensorType

registry = SensorRegistry()

# EO/IR camera on CSI-2 lane 0
registry.register(
    sensor_id="eo_ir_primary",
    sensor_type=SensorType.EO_IR,
    interface="csi2:lane0",
    fps=30,
    resolution=(1920, 1080)
)

# mmWave radar on SPI bus
registry.register(
    sensor_id="mmwave_fwd",
    sensor_type=SensorType.MMWAVE,
    interface="spi:0",
    chirp_config="76GHz_300m"
)

# Unified stream — inference pipeline is sensor-agnostic
stream = registry.get_unified_stream()

APPLICATION SCENARIOS

Platform integration configurations.

Configuration A

Fixed-Wing ISR UAS

A medium-endurance fixed-wing carrying EO/IR + mmWave dual payload. The HAL fuses thermal detection cues with radar range, Doppler velocity, and AoA for multi-modal track confirmation. On-board inference runs at <40ms end-to-end. No uplink required during the surveillance pattern — suited for denied or intermittent-comms environments.

Configuration B

UGV Forward Patrol

A ground platform carrying MEMS acoustic array + EO/IR for close-terrain ISR. Acoustic event detection — rotary-wing signature, impulse, vehicle engine — triggers EO/IR cueing within 200ms. The fused track passes to the ROS 2 mission interface for operator alerting. Zero cloud dependency; operates in GPS-denied terrain where UAS datalink is unavailable.

ENGAGE

Evaluating multi-modal sensor payloads?

We can discuss payload compatibility, HAL integration complexity, timestamp synchronization architecture, and end-to-end latency for your specific sensor combination and platform power budget. Kestrelsense does not manufacture sensor hardware — we integrate and abstract it. Technical briefings available for program offices and prime systems integrators.

Request Technical Briefing