Wednesday, October 18, 2006

N.M. Tech works with AgilOptics

Andrew Webb The Albuquerque Journal

Special to El Defensor Chieftain

New Mexico Tech, with the help of an Albuquerque technology firm, wants to put the fruits of Cold War "adaptive" optics research into consumers' hands.

The proposed Commercialization and Industrialization of Adaptive Optics Center is to be housed, at least temporarily, at Albuquerque's AgilOptics. It aims to offer scientists, technology and workbench space to any company that thinks it might have a good way to use flexible mirrors and other motorized or automated devices to correct for errors in the way optical instruments see, make or process light.

The optics commercialization project is backed by a $200,000 grant from the Technology Research Collaborative, which announced four such grants last month. The project has subsequently raised another $200,000 in matching funding and has funded two projects at Albuquerque startups to the tune of $50,000, said Gary Loos, an optical scientist working on Tech's Magdalena Ridge Observatory and the school's point man for the optics project.

Adaptive optics technology is a remnant of various directed-energy weapons projects explored at the Air Force Research Lab decades ago. They were developed to help overcome aberrations caused by atmosphere, optical flaws and immense distance, which make it hard to aim a laser or other device.

Foos, a veteran of some of that Air Force research, says the group's aim is to make adaptive optics a household name by adapting it to sharpening camera images and improving telescope or medical device performance, among other possibilities.

"There was not much commercialization then," he said of research into space- and air-based laser weapons and other devices performed in the 1970s, '80s and early '90s.

"The technology tends to be rather complicated and expensive," he said. "The CIAO project is not to do research, but rather to help any companies that might benefit from this technology to develop a concept, prove it in a laboratory, package it and develop marketing that will help them get it to market."

The two $50,000 grants went to Kestrel Corp., which is developing a device that, when attached to amateur and professional telescopes, could correct for the effects of the atmosphere and even manufacturing flaws. The other grant went to Wavefront Sciences, which is developing a sensor for in adaptive optics systems.

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