Real-Time Adaptive Multi-Spot Laser Beam Steering System (RAMS-LBS)

"The goal of this Phase II STTR is to develop a portable multi-spot beam steering system and demonstrate it to potentially interested companies and agencies. The demonstration activities will serve to identify ways that the product can be applied, suggestways that the hardware and software comprising the system can be improved, and customize the product for specific military and biomedical applications including multi-target laser designation and tracking systems (specifically the DARPA STAB project), andmultiple trap laser tweezer systems (specifically in collaboration with the laser tweezer company Cell Robotics.) The development of this portable breadboard and its ability to be customized is critical to convincing system developers, engineers andinvestors in various business sectors of the feasibility of the system to their specific applications. Though during the Phase I STTR we did demonstrate the feasibility of real-time multi-spot beam steering through a variety of laboratory experiments,extensive hardware and software development is required during Phase II to permit potential customers to focus on evaluating the system for their specific applications. The Phase II breadboard will serve to expedite evaluation by interested parties andfurther it will help in the identification of many new ways that parallel and independently steered laser beams can be applied. Spot generation for directing light to disparate destinations is needed for dynamic optical interconnects. Controlling focalplane distance which is one of the proposed tasks could be useful for non-mechanically addressing multi-layer optical disks. Wave front correction, for astronomy as well as medical and industrial environments is another potential beneficiary of theproposed technology. Additional possible applications range from laser marking for large scale manufacturing to laser tweezers for bioresearch and medical testing."