Resonant Scan Lens for Scanning Beam LIDAR

The objective of this Phase II project is to research, develop, and commercialize a resonant scan lens (RSL) for use in a resonant light detection and ranging (R-LIDAR) distance sensor. R-LIDAR uses a resonant optomechanical system to generate a beam scan. While resonant optomechanical systems produce high-speed and large field-of-view (FOV) scans from a miniature form factor, the beam scans lack uniformity across the FOV. Poor scan uniformity is typically addressed by clipping the scan periphery to remove the most non-uniform regions. Z-senz proposes to research and develop an RSL to linearize a resonant scan thereby increasing the FOV and duty-cycle of an R-LIDAR sensor. This project builds upon the NIST Phase I SBIR effort that demonstrated a 25% average improvement in linearity from a 90% duty-cycle scan compared to an unmodified resonant beam scan. This project proposes to iterate the RSL design to achieve a 75% average improvement in linearity from a 90% duty-cycle scan and develop this technology for use in an R-LIDAR sensor. While the RSL research improves the performance of the R-LIDAR system, this technology has utility to a large number of high speed imaging and display applications, including: microscopy, endoscopy, ophthalmology, scanning displays, and laser machining.