DARPA’s SWEEPER

[bobbymike]

DARPA’s Short-range Wide-field-of-view Extremely agile Electronically steered Photonic EmitteR (SWEEPER) program

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/05/darpa-can-non-mechanically-sweep-laser.html

 

[stealthflanker]

yay..laser electronically scanned array is finally here.

Would be nice to know its power handling capability of the beam steering component. If it can be made high enough..in number of megawatt or hundreds of kilowatt. Then we have the key for ultimate missile defense.

 

[fredymac]

Rats. There goes my idea for something to replace those stupid spinning LIDAR cones on top of self driving cars and retiring rich. I was thinking of using a TI MEMS "MMD" (multi mirror device) to do the scanning. The TI chip is used as a binary light valve for old fashioned projection TV's but if you could vary the mirror tilts vs time it could do the same thing.

Back in the 80's, Lockheed developed an "Electro Optic Phase Change" beam steering array for HEL systems. Nothing came of it and I can't remember how it worked. I think they imparted beam phase cell by cell so the across the whole array you achieved an overall tilt the way a phased array radar works.