Photonics, Optics and Lasers

Conventional optical imaging systems today largely limit themselves to the measurement of light intensity, providing two-dimensional renderings of three-dimensional scenes and ignoring significant amounts of additional information that may be carried by captured light.

Find a way to replace a large, heavy and expensive technology with an equivalent one that’s a lot smaller, lighter and cheaper and you have a shot at turning a boutique technology into a world changer. Think of the room-sized computers of the 1940s that now are outpowered by the run-of-the-mill central processing unit in laptop computers. Or the miniaturized GPS components that contribute geolocation smartness in cell phones. DARPA program manager Joshua Conway has another shrinking act in mind: packing the light-catching powers of bulky lens-filled telescopes onto flat, semiconductor wafers that are saucer-sized or smaller, featherweight and cheap to make.

Developers of imaging systems have long been beholden to certain rules of optics designs so well established and seemingly immutable as to be treated as virtual “laws” of physics. One widely considered pillar of optical design, for example, is that imaging systems must be built from a series of complex and precisely manufactured optical elements arranged linearly. The result of such assumptions is that certain high-performance imagery devices inevitably end up being large and heavy, composed of dozens or more optical elements.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is sponsoring a Proposers Day to provide information to potential proposers on the objectives of an anticipated Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for the Extreme Optics and Imaging (EXTREME) program. The Proposers Day will be held on September 1, 2016 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT. This event will be conducted solely via webcast and advance registration is required. For more information visit: http://go.usa.gov/xjugk.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) is hosting a Proposers Day to provide information to potential proposers on the objectives that will be specified in an anticipated Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) of the Modular Optical Apertures Building Blocks (MOABB) program. The MOAB program aims to develop advanced technologies that could catalyze the creation of ultracompact light detection and ranging (LIDAR) systems.