Description: During Phase I of this project, two approaches for achieving polarization-independent non-mechanical lidar beam steering were demonstrated, and a demonstrator system was fabricated and testing. The demonstrated technology based on spatial modulation of geometrical phase has been reduced to a well-understood method for switching the pointing direction of laser beams and receiver fields of view. The Phase II project will extend these results to allow future NASA beam steering systems to electronically steer lidar transmitter, receiver, and transceiver pointing directions for any polarization of lidar radiation, and will develop the supporting technology needed to enable such systems to operate in relevant environments, especially the thermal and radiation environments likely to be encountered in future space missions. Adding polarization independence will extend the applicability of non-mechanical beam steering to additional classes of lidar, since such independence can increase the received signal by up to a factor of four with some types of lidars. The weight reduction that is obtained in future lidar systems using the developed technology will be maximized by identifying optical components with the minimum possible weight that still meet wavefront quality requirements.

Benefits: Compact, low SWaP, non-mechanical, hence, robust, LiDARs with reliable and fast data acquisition capability that meet requirements for a space landing vehicle could be used for other NASA missions including asteroid flybys, swarms of cubesats, etc. due to higher precision guidance and navigation systems. An additional potential application of this technology is to transceiver steering for free-space optical communications systems.

Numerous non-NASA applications include autonomous navigation systems for ground and air vehicles and robots, and commercial free-space optical communications.