Luminit LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: A14-008

Description

To address the Army need for a semi-active laser (SAL) missile tracker that can lock onto a coded illuminator signal and ignore background noise, Luminit, LLC, has developed the preliminary Compound Eye Laser Missile Seeker (CELMS). The CELMS is a compound eye device, with input optics based on the eye of a bee, implementing 16 independent lenses in a square array. Each individual lens is coupled to a light guide; four of the lens outputs are combined into each quadrant of the missile’s field of regard. Each quadrant then relays the light from its four lenses to one spectral filter, which removes the background and passes the signal – which, in turn, is converted to a voltage by a photodetector and electronics (a standard Army system). This voltage is further processed into guidance signals for the missile. In Phase II, Luminit fabricated and tested a CELMS prototype that demonstrated tracking a weak laser signal in the presence of strong sunlight, and demonstrated basic CELMS capabilities, ending at TRL 5. In Phase II-S, we plan to develop the CELMS into a fully operational prototype that will be the basis of a production version of CELMS to be finalized during Phase III.