The Research Institute for Optronics and Pattern Recognition (FOM) has at present a staff of 100 employees - including 60 scientists. It has been created by joining the former FGAN institutes FfO (Research Institute for Optics) and FIM (Research Institute for Information Processing and Pattern Recognition).

The research areas of the original institutes have continued with the FOM. This work is mainly concerned with military issues of electro-optics and pattern recognition.