Snake view: exploring thermal imaging as a vision extender in mountains

Human's vision can only operate in the limited visible band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Using commercially available imaging sensors can be beneficial to extend human's visual perception in different environments. Typically, these environments include challenging conditions, for instance smoky views during a fire or occluded, foggy, cloudy and windy view in mountain environments. Recently, thermal imaging became more commercially available, which makes utilizing it to extend the human's visual perception affordable and deployable. In this paper, we propose the usage of thermal imaging as a vision extension tool. Two initial prototypes are presented depicting the different form factors of thermal cameras attachment to Head Mounted Displays. Finally, we discuss potential use case of extending the human's vision to cover the thermal spectrum during mountains activities.