Design and Manufacture of Airborne Lidar System

Challenge

Harris Corporation came to Quartus with a desire to buy airborne Lidar systems for use in a commercial data acquisition application. The requirements for required resolution and data rates were extremely challenging, and the scanning methods currently available appeared to be inadequate to achieve the goals.

Solution

Quartus provided Harris with a turnkey solution to their problem in the form of a very precise, highly engineered Lidar system that incorporated cutting edge aerospace design, including novel (and subsequently patented) scanner technology. Quartus designed and fabricated the entire system, including electronics, and met all requirements including not only technical/optical performance, but also structural integrity and airworthiness. Quartus created a series of “Analysis driven design” concepts using FEA and CFD, which were built as prototypes, and the effort ultimately culminated in a set of three flight units being built and delivered to Harris.

In addition to the engineering design challenges of the effort, it was discovered as part of the novel scanner design process that there were no commercially available holographic optical elements (HOE’s) suitable for the scanner’s needs. As a result, Quartus researched and developed in-house capability to create HOE’s of the size and quality needed for the program in order to keep effort on track.