The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc.

Timothy J McCarthy

Juha-Pekka J Laine

Stephen P Smith

Benjamin F Lane

Jeffrey A Korn

Robin Mark Adrian Dawson

Gregory P Blasche

Matthew T Jamula

Joseph M Kinast

Paul A Bohn

Richard E Stoner

Simone B Bortolami

Eric T Hoke

Daniel M Meiser

Adam J Saltzman

A visual navigation system includes a compass configured to orient a user in a heading direction, an image sensor configured to capture a series of successive navigation images in the heading direction, one or more of the navigation images having at least two reference markers, data storage memory configured to store the series of successive navigation images, a navigation processor configured to identify at least one principal marker and at least one ancillary marker from the at least two reference markers, the principal marker positioned within a principal angle and the ancillary marker positioned within an ancillary angle, which is greater than the principal angle, and to determine heading direction information based on a position of the at least one principal marker and/or the at least one ancillary marker in the successive navigation images, and a user interface configured to provide the heading direction information to the user.

Camera-based heading-hold navigation

A fiber optical sensor and methods for sensing a physical quantity such as rotation using the same. The sensor has an optical fiber supporting propagation of light that is configured as an interferometer. One or more segments of the optical fiber, where the segments may be non-contiguous, are poled in such a manner that a phase shift in light propagating through the fiber is created in response to application of a voltage to an electrode thereby inducing an electric field across a poled segment of the fiber. A phase modulator comprising multiple poled segments is additionally described. Applying phase-shifting effects differentially across poled segments of optical fibers of an array of optical fibers may also allow for steering an optical beam.

Segmented poled optical fiber for fiber optic sensor and phased array

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Danvers, MA, United States of America

Timothy J McCarthy