Abstract
This article discusses the history of laser radar development in America, Europe, and Asia. Direct detection laser radar is discussed for range finding, designation, and topographic mapping of Earth and of extraterrestrial objects. Coherent laser radar is discussed for environmental applications, such as wind sensing and for synthetic aperture laser radar development. Gated imaging is discussed through scattering layers for military, medical, and security applications. Laser microradars have found applications in intravascular studies and in ophthalmology for vision correction. Ghost laser radar has emerged as a new technology in theoretical and simulation applications. Laser radar is now emerging as an important technology for applications such as self-driving cars and unmanned aerial vehicles. It is also used by police to measure speed, and in gaming, such as the Microsoft Kinect.
Highlights
Laser radar started most of its development in the early 1960s, shortly after the invention of the laser
There is no space within our short article to embrace all variants of optical coherence tomography (OCT) and of its application, so we address the readers to the encyclopedic-style books.[182,183,184]
Laser radars have passed through many developmental stages since the first attempts to use lasers for ranging, which resulted in broad military applications for range finding and weapon guidance, especially laser designation, a form of bistatic laser radar
Summary
Laser radar ( called ladar for laser detection and ranging, lidar for light detection and ranging, or opdar for optical detection and ranging) started most of its development in the early 1960s, shortly after the invention of the laser. Overviews on the history of laser radar development appeared concerning Europe,[9] the United States,[10] the former. We have limited our examples to a sample of laser radar techniques and applications instead of trying to cover the whole field. It is still a daunting organizational task to cover the world history of laser radar technology for more than 50 years
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