High Resolution Underwater Ranging and Imaging

Knowledge of the local three-dimensional environment is critical for effective mission execution, particularly for autonomous vehicles. LIDAR optical ranging and imaging offers the potential to improve ranging speed and accuracy. LIDAR ranging provides a high-fidelity geometric representation of the environment, with reflectivity strength preserving optical contrast, two features very useful for automatic target recognition (ATR). However, optical solutions are limited by water turbidity, which scatters light and limits the effect range and resolution of LIDAR underwater. Creare proposes to develop the high-resolution underwater LIDAR (HRUL). The HRUL features flexible conditioning and processing of the received optical return that adaptively adjusts the optical processing scheme to maximize ranging resolution for the local water turbidity. Modern advances in pulsed fiber lasers, optical modulation, optical sensing, time-of-flight calculation, and embedded processing allow the HRUL to achieve mission-relevant area coverage rates (order 1 million three-dimensional points per second) and ranging resolution (sub-centimeter) in a low size, weight, and power package suitable for integration with an autonomous undersea vehicle (AUV). In Phase I we will demonstrate our novel optical processing approach and in Phase II we will build a full-scale system for integration with an AUV.