Seeing beyond the visible
SWIR is helping us see more than ever before. From monitoring crops to inspecting infrastructure, many of today’s most valuable insights come from looking beyond visible light. Until recently, that level of sensing required costly, specialist equipment – but now, quantum-dot-based UAV payloads like Q.Fly® Explore, make it lightweight, affordable, and ready for the field.
What is SWIR?
Unlike thermal cameras, which detect emitted heat, short-wave infrared (SWIR) senses reflected infrared light – capturing how surfaces absorb and scatter light rather than their temperature.
Operating between roughly 900–1700 nm, it covers a range where light interacts differently with materials. This capability has helped researchers monitor environments, see through challenging conditions, and inspect complex systems. But the high cost and complexity of traditional InGaAs sensors confined SWIR to research labs and specialist applications.
Now, advances in quantum dots are bringing it into the field.
Quantum dot imaging
Traditional InGaAs sensors are expensive and complex to manufacture. Quantum dots change that. These nanoscale semiconductors can be tuned to absorb specific wavelengths, enabling compact and lightweight sensor modules. Providing a broad spectral response from 900–1700 nm, they can be paired with interchangeable filters for more targeted sensing.
This shift is bringing SWIR out of the lab and into the field, with quantum-dot SWIR payloads like Q.Fly® Explore, giving researchers a ready-to-fly platform for testing and data collection without complex integration.
Limitless applications
Sensing reflected infrared light from the air has limitless applications – from search and rescue and remote sensing to asset inspection. In agriculture, SWIR can detect crop stress, map soil moisture, and spot early signs of disease, supporting precision farming and yield optimisation. For environmental monitoring, it enables remote sensing of water distribution, vegetation health, and drought impact, revealing subtle changes across landscapes and supporting spectral index mapping such as NDVI and NDMI.
In infrastructure and asset inspection, SWIR can detect trapped moisture, differentiate between materials, and reveal defects beneath surfaces – without contact or disruption. It’s also a powerful tool in emergency response, seeing through smoke, haze, or poor visibility to provide clearer situational awareness in challenging conditions such as firefighting or search and rescue.
By exposing the physical properties of materials rather than just their appearance, SWIR adds a new layer of understanding to aerial imaging.
Q.Fly® Explore
Our Q.Fly® Explore payload is designed to let you start exploring what SWIR can do straight out of the box. It’s the world’s first DJI-integrated quantum-dot SWIR payload, bringing real-time spectral imaging to UAVs in a truly plug-and-play format.
Lightweight and efficient, Q.Fly Explore gives researchers and operators a system sensitive to the key wavelengths used in index mapping and remote sensing. With built-in GNSS for precise georeferencing and interchangeable filters, it enables users to capture and analyse spectral data directly in the field.
Learn more at www.q-fly.com/explore.