Development of shutter subsystems for infrared imagers

Requirements for shutters used in Infrared Thermal Weapon Sight (TWS) systems, Driver Vision Enhancement (DVE) and other thermal imaging systems are becoming increasingly more demanding. These performance requirements have been achieved using a unique, modular, reconfigurable rotary drive actuator with bi-stability and direct connection to the blade. A "Smart Shutter" acts as a complete sub-system that can be tested as an integral module. A multi-blade variant has been developed that retains the reliability of the rotary drive system and decreases the physical size of largeraperture shutters. Predictions of next-generation application-specific shutter designs will be offered in the paper.