Irvine Sensors Corporation — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A20-095

Description

Autonomous vehicles rely on perception sensors such as cameras, RADAR, and LIDAR to enable them to safely and reliability traverse their surroundings.  Unfortunately, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) RADAR and LIDAR sensors do not provide reliable functionality in the challenging environments encountered and created by autonomous military combat platforms.  ISC has developed a wide area, high resolution, rugged LIDAR concept illustrated in Figure 1 which provides three-dimensional perception to a range of 250m within a large 40-degree elevation by 360-degree azimuth search field.  This field of regard is examined at up to a 30 Hz rate facilitating the detection and tracking of fast-moving objects around the vehicle and real-time navigation decisions.  Furthermore, the system is equipped with on-board, cognitive-inspired object detection and classification (AI at the Edge) capability improving the navigation decision-making process and providing threat assessment when desired.   A high rep rate scanned fiber laser operating at 1.5 microns enable this performance.  In this project, this design will be ruggedized to meet the challenging ground combat vehicle environment.