Eyes are very sensitive things. Their secondary mission in life sometimes appears to be to get injured or irritated. When working with potentially eye-damaging media like visible lasers, bright lights, and many signals with wavelength outside the visual range, we must design to protect others according to approved health and safety standards.
Visible light (330nm - 700nm wavelength) is a small portion of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum. For instance, sound has a much longer wavelength and is detected only by our ears while remaining invisible to the eyes. With enough power, any wavelength can damage the eye. The portion of the eye damaged and extent of damage possible is dependent on the wavelength of the RF, the power of the source signal, the relative geometry of the lighting and eye, and the characteristics of the eye material illuminated.
<will show list of types of light versus portion of eye damaged here>
The wavelengths of light (700-1400nm),(1400-10000nm),(10-100microns) are referred to as near, mid, and far field infrared(IR) respectively. The far-field wavelengths are commonly referred to as heat.
The black and white camera on the face capture vest is an infrared sensitive
board
camera. We added a ring of infrared emitting diodes and an infrared
filter to ensure
that our camera would operate only in the infrared and beyond.