Gidel at UVID 2025

UVID 2025 Gidel: FPGA Imaging for UAV & Defense Systems

At UVID 2025, Gidel demonstrated FPGA-based imaging technologies for UAV, defense, and airborne applications. The demonstrations covered two complementary workflows: real-time image acquisition and processing with FantoVision20-GigE, and ultra-fast high-resolution post-processing with SkyBoost.

FantoVision20-GigE: Real-Time FPGA Imaging for UAV & Defense

The live demonstration featured FantoVision20-GigE, combining NVIDIA Jetson processing with FPGA-based 10 GigE Vision acquisition and real-time image processing.

The FPGA handled deterministic image acquisition, HDR, image enhancement, and Quality+ Compression before transferring the processed image data to the Jetson for AI and application processing.

By moving these pixel-intensive operations to the FPGA, the system reduced acquisition and image-processing overhead on the Jetson. This left more CPU/GPU resources available for detection, tracking, classification, and mission applications.

The architecture is well suited to UAV, ISR, EO/IR, airborne surveillance, and rugged imaging systems that require low latency, deterministic acquisition, and efficient bandwidth usage.

Engineers evaluating GigE Vision camera selection can also review Gidel’s guide to GigE Vision cameras to compare bandwidth, connectivity, cabling, synchronization, and acquisition requirements.

SkyBoost: Ultra-Fast High-Resolution Processing

SkyBoost demonstrated FPGA acceleration for high-resolution image-processing workflows.

In the demonstrated workflow, SkyBoost reduced processing time from more than 20 seconds per image to more than two images per second. This significantly accelerates post-processing of large aerial and mission image datasets that might otherwise require many hours or even days.

For UAV and defense applications, this can shorten workflows involving aerial reconnaissance, mapping, inspection, intelligence analysis, and mission reporting.

For a deeper look at this workflow, see Gidel’s article on aerial photogrammetry acceleration with SkyBoost.

FPGA Processing Across Real-Time and Post-Mission Workflows

The two UVID 2025 demonstrations represented complementary stages of an airborne imaging workflow.

FantoVision20-GigE demonstrated FPGA processing directly during acquisition, including camera interfacing, HDR, image enhancement, compression, and data preparation before NVIDIA Jetson AI processing.

SkyBoost demonstrated FPGA acceleration after acquisition, processing large high-resolution image datasets inside a host workstation or server.

Together, these architectures show how FPGA processing can reduce bandwidth pressure and CPU/GPU bottlenecks during a mission while also accelerating high-resolution analysis after the mission

Applications for UAV, Defense & Airborne Imaging

The technologies demonstrated at UVID 2025 support demanding imaging applications including:

• ISR and EO/IR imaging
• UAV and airborne payloads
• Aerial surveillance and reconnaissance
• High-resolution aerial imaging
• Recording with constrained data links
• Real-time image enhancement
• Edge AI detection and classification
• Post-mission image processing and analysis
• Rugged and low-SWaP imaging systems

Explore Gidel FPGA Imaging Solutions

• FantoVision Edge AI Systems
• SkyBoost High-Resolution Imaging Acceleration
• Real-Time HDR
• Quality+ Compression

UVID 2025 Event Details

📆 Wednesday, November 26, 2025
📌 Pavilion 1, EXPO Tel Aviv

Official event page: UVID DroneTech