Ocean Visibility and Optics Lab

Project Manager

Fraser Dalgleish, Ph.D.

Project Team

• Walter Britton, Hardware Development Engineer
• Brian Ramos, Software Engineer
• Carl Andren, Volunteer (Senior Electronics Engineer)
• Kathy Russ, Mechanical Designer
• Baldwin Britton, Intern

Project Description

The pulsed laser line scan (PLLS) is a state-of-the-art underwater imaging system which has been designed to deliver high contrast seabed images over wide swaths to allow for rapid inspection, survey and site assessment. The long-term goal of this project is to transition the technology to the world’s growing fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).

Utilizing mathematical modeling and simulation techniques, as well as benchtop pulsed laser imaging system hardware development, it has been demonstrated at HBOI that the use of pulsed lasers can significantly improve the performance of the state-of-the-art underwater imagers, also allowing for reduced form factor payloads and enhanced seabed object classification capability via the use of 3D imaging. Such systems will ultimately be used alongside the state-of-the-art acoustic imaging to allow for next generation seabed visualization.

Funding is currently sought to advance the technology into a payload package to allow at-sea deployments.

Our collaborators on this project are:

Physical Sciences Inc. (Andover, MA)
Q-Peak Inc. (Bedford, NH)
Metron Inc. (Reston, VA)
Navair (Patuxent River, MD)
Lincoln Laser Inc. (Phoenix, AZ)

References

Dalgleish, F. R. and Caimi. F. M., 2011, “Laser Line Scanners for Undersea Imaging Applications,” Book chapter in Handbook of Optical and Laser Scanning (Stutz, G. E. and Marshall, G. F. (Ed.)) CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, Boca Raton, FL, USA.

Dalgleish, F. R., Caimi, F. M. and Stutz, G. E., 2011, “Method and Apparatus for Synchronous Laser Beam Scanning”, U.S. Patent 11/857,039.

Caimi. F. M. and Dalgleish, F. R., 2010, “Performance considerations for continuous-wave and pulsed laser line scan (LLS) imaging systems,” Journal of the European Optical Society – Rapid Publications 5, 10020S, 2010.

Dalgleish, F. R. Caimi, F. M. Britton W. B. and Andren C. F. 2009, "Improved LLS imaging performance in scattering-dominant waters," SPIE, Vol. 7317, 2009.