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Fortunately, the military industrial complex has the solution to this. For some time now, there have been worries over lasers being used to blind sensors and pe
by gene-h 8y ago
Fortunately, the military industrial complex has the solution to this. For some time now, there have been worries over lasers being used to blind sensors and people so a number of approaches have been developed to defend against this. Lasers only emit at a set of limited wavelengths so one can block out just these wavelengths. Another more exotic approach is to block the light coming in as soon as the laser has been detected. LCDs are an obvious solution to this, though I have seen microshutter arrays proposed for this in a Popular Science/Mechanics magazine a while back. Although, it's probably better to prevent LIDAR from destroying cameras in the first place.
- dogma1138 8y agoI’m pretty sure you mean the defense industry, the military industrial complex isn’t the defense industry, it doesn’t make anything ;) And the solution is far more simpler than you think the domes for the sensor packages are simply better rated, as they are rated for true 99.999% absorption for both UV and IR (beyond FLIR ranges) some of them also have an inner layer that would darken if the light penetrates that deep creating a dark spot that would block the light completely since replacing a dome is cheaper than replacing a cryogenic IR sensor array. But beyond that you can blind the sensors with most pen lasers as well as damage it with visible light, the reason why it’s not much of an issue is that due to simple physics you won’t be able to focus a beam narrow enough to hit the sensor even atmospheric refraction alone would prevent that from happening and any laser capable of damaging the sensor at the point would likely be able to damage the drone. The IR dome protection was mostly implemented to protect the sensor if the drone is painted with an illuminated.