Eyesafe LiDAR Testbed

Ball Joint Gimbal Mirror

The Ball Joint Gimbal Mirror is a coarse sensor pointing. It steers the laser beam toward the area of interest. Compared to the fine steering mirror, it has a greater range of motion, moves slower, and increments at a larger resolution.

Texel Camera

The Texel Camera is used for high resolution color imagery. A co-boresighted color camera takes high-resolution CMOS digital images of the scene. The pixels of the image are precisely aligned with the ladar shots. This results in on-the-fly generation of three-dimensional color images composed of texels.

Telescope Receiver

The telescope receiver collects reflecting photons. The laser pulse is reflected off of the target, collected in a telescope and focused on a photodiode detector. The detector converts the pulse to an electronic signal that is digitized and stored. The full waveform of the signal is collected, enabling experimentation with a variety of techniques for accurately measuring the range to target.

Laser Transmitter

The laser transmitter sends photons to the target. Laser pulses are emitted 10,000 to 100,000 times per second by a laser head. The photons in each pulse are bounced off of the target and returned to the telescope receiver for detection and measurement.

Fine Steering Mirror

Used for fine raster scanning, the Fine Steering Mirror (FSM) scans the laser energy in a raster pattern, which is then steered by the Ball Joint Gimbal Mirror. The FSM has a small range of motion, but can move quickly and accurately.