SBIR Phase I: Advanced Telescopic Gunsight

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to improve the combat effectiveness and safety of warfighters and law enforcement officers by making their gunsights significantly more rugged and reliable than current state of practice. The research and development conducted under this project will enhance scientific and technological understanding of optical beam steering and optical guidance techniques applicable to broad fields of science and engineering, such as astronomy, missile tracking, remote sensing and self-driving cars. The proposed project aims to develop an extremely rugged telescopic sight. Once a telescopic sight is mounted on a rifle, it is necessary to adjust its “point of aim” so that it corresponds to the “point of impact” where the bullet actually hits the target. Most telescopic sights available today shift the position of the crosshairs inside the sight to adjust the point of aim. Military and hunting applications require adjustment precision of ½ of a minute of arc or better. Because the turrets and the springs holding the crosshairs in conventional gun sights are delicate mechanical pieces, conventional telescopic sights lose their precision over time due to the rifle’s recoil and other vibrations encountered during field use. This project will advance a completely new design in which the crosshairs remain fixed while the image of the target formed on the crosshairs is shifted optically. We will study the potential for optical aberrations and mitigation techniques, then optimize the design for both image quality and cost of manufacture. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.