Areté Associates has developed a low-SWAP 3D imaging lidar to enhance rotorcraft pilot situational awareness in degraded visual environments (DVE). The lidar incorporates full waveform processing with an agile scanning system and variable pulse repetition rate (PRF) laser into a purpose-built imaging system optimized for operations in DVE. Full waveform processing robustly eliminates false contacts from dust and other obscurants; the agile scanner provides a dense scan pattern over user-defined, mission-based field of regard (FOR); and the laser PRF can be adjusted to provide unambiguous imaging over long ranges. Areté’s DVE Lidar is the culmination of a multi-year development effort that included multiple ground and flight tests in DVE scenarios and a repackaging effort to miniaturize processing and support electronics so they could be integrated into the sensor head. We present here a system overview of the Areté DVE Lidar and highlight some of the unique capabilities that make it the system of choice for DVE operations.
Areté Associates, in partnership with the Army’s Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD), have demonstrated in flight a fused LIDAR/LWIR/EO system that provides a pilotage aid for rotorcraft operations in degraded visual environments (DVE). Areté’s purpose-built DVE lidar provides full-waveform processing to enable novel dust suppression and weak-target detection techniques. This lidar system is integrated with wide field of view, high resolution, LWIR and EO cameras to provide full situational awareness with fast update rates. The sensor fusion system creates a high-fidelity 3D world model in real time including ground surface, terrain features, hazards, and obscurant distributions. This model is used to construct an informative and intuitive cockpit display in real time. This system also incorporates offline terrain and image data bases to augment the live sensor data in areas beyond the sensor fields of view. This system will be tested in flight in DVE in 2016.
James Murray, Jason Seely, Jeff Plath, Eric Gotfredson, John Engel, Bill Ryder, Neil Van Lieu, Ron Goodwin, Tyler Wagner, Greg Fetzer, Nick Kridler, Chris Melancon, Ken Panici, Anthony Mitchell
Areté Associates recently developed and flight tested a next-generation low-latency near real-time dust-penetrating (DUSPEN) imaging lidar system. These tests were accomplished for Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC) Aircraft Division (AD) 4.5.6 (EO/IR Sensor Division) under the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Future Naval Capability (FNC) Helicopter Low-Level Operations (HELO) Product 2 program. Areté’s DUSPEN system captures full lidar waveforms and uses sophisticated real-time detection and filtering algorithms to discriminate hard target returns from dust and other obscurants. Down-stream 3D image processing methods are used to enhance pilot visualization of threat objects and ground features during severe DVE conditions. This paper presents results from these recent flight tests in full brown-out conditions at Yuma Proving Grounds (YPG) from a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter platform.
James Murray, Jason Seely, Jeff Plath, Eric Gotfreson, John Engel, Bill Ryder, Neil Van Lieu, Ron Goodwin, Tyler Wagner, Greg Fetzer, Nick Kridler, Chris Melancon, Ken Panici, Anthony Mitchell
Areté Associates recently developed and flight tested a next-generation low-latency near real-time dust-penetrating
(DUSPEN) imaging lidar system. These tests were accomplished for Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC) Aircraft
Division (AD) 4.5.6 (EO/IR Sensor Division) under the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Future Naval Capability (FNC)
Helicopter Low-Level Operations (HELO) Product 2 program. Areté’s DUSPEN system captures full lidar waveforms
and uses sophisticated real-time detection and filtering algorithms to discriminate hard target returns from dust and other
obscurants. Down-stream 3D image processing methods are used to enhance pilot visualization of threat objects and
ground features during severe DVE conditions. This paper presents results from these recent flight tests in full brown-out
conditions at Yuma Proving Grounds (YPG) from a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter platform.
We report high power operation of a vertical external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) operating around 1180 nm. The gain chip of the VECSEL comprises 10 strain-compensated GaInAs/GaAs quantum wells in a top-emitting configuration. A maximum output power of 23 W was achieved with a mount temperature of about 0 ‡C, and 20.5 W with the mount temperature of about 12 °C. By introducing a birefringent filter inside the laser cavity we demonstrate a tuning range of 67 nm. The gain chip was also used to construct a VECSEL for single-frequency operation. In this configuration, a maximum output power of about 11 W was recorded.
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