Geometric Inference with Microlens Arrays

This dissertation explores an alternative to traditional fiducial markers where geometric information is inferred from the observed position of 3D points seen in an image. We offer an alternative approach which enables geometric inference based on the relative orientation of markers in an image. We present markers fabricated from microlenses whose appearance changes depending on the marker\u27s orientation relative to the camera. First, we show how to manufacture and calibrate chromo-coding lenticular arrays to create a known relationship between the observed hue and orientation of the array. Second, we use 2 small chromo-coding lenticular arrays to estimate the pose of an object. Third, we use 3 large chromo-coding lenticular arrays to calibrate a camera with a single image. Finally, we create another type of fiducial marker from lenslet arrays that encode orientation with discrete black and white appearances. Collectively, these approaches oer new opportunities for pose estimation and camera calibration that are relevant for robotics, virtual reality, and augmented reality

Development of an ultrafast laser ultra-precision machining platform

Ultra-precision manufacturing is commonplace in today’s society. It is used in a huge number of applications from electronics, medical devices to energy devices. Most devices manufactured using ultra-precision methods are made in high quantities where the volume of the components is required to outweigh the cost of the production equipment. However, there are few technologies targeting the manufacture of prototypes or small batches and those that are costly in terms of time or resources. Thus, there is a demand for a high speed, flexible manufacturing platform that is capable of ultra-precise manufacture. Currently, manufacturing techniques using ultrafast lasers are limited with regards to accuracy and repeatability. This body of work investigates how to develop an ultra-precision ultrafast laser manufacturing platform. From literature it was found that there are a significant number of avenues that could be investigated to improve the precision of an ultrafast laser machining process. This included the integration of metrology to perform closed-loop processing, studies of laser stability, new machining strategies and the effect of processing on plume formation. A significant proportion of the research presented was focused on the development of the ultra-precision platform. This work was carried out to provide a basis for this research but also for those that will use the platform in the future. One of the key outputs from this development was a graphical user interface that integrated with the range of devices on the platform such as the laser, 5-axis stage and beam diagnostic tools. This interface provides methods for automatic tilt correction, autofocus for the laser, angular ablation machining methods and other diagnostic tools. The interface is setup to capture the required data to provide traceability and diagnostics on the laser machining process. This aided the research carried out into improving the accuracy and repeatability of the laser-based process. First, an investigation into the characteristics of the laser installed on the ultra-precision platform was undertaken to determine the long-term stability of the laser with regards to the pointing stability, power stability and beam diameter stability. These characteristics are significant because they all affect the fluence at the focal spot which is responsible for ablating material. Variance in any of those parameters can have an effect and therefore influence the accuracy and repeatability of the process. The effect of duty cycle on power repeatability and the implications of this on machining was examined. Finally, a simulation was created to demonstrate the effect of laser stability on quality of machining. The ability to machine on angled planes enabled an investigation of the effect of angle on plume formation and the ablation threshold of the material. The ablation threshold for silicon was found at angles between normal and 45 degrees. It was found that the threshold could not be correlated with change of incident angle on the area of the focal spot. A range of different powers and angles were captured using the holographic camera and the effect on plume development was assessed. Overall, a range of tasks was completed which enabled several developments of the ultra-precision platform. These included in-process monitoring, the establishment of a novel machining strategy, and the capture of the effect of angular ablation on plume formation using a holographic camera. The platform is now placed to continue further development and integrate with other metrology technologies to provide closed-loop machining capabilities which will lead into a laser-based process which will be used for MEMS and similar device manufacture.EPSR

CALIBRATING SLOPE-DEPENDENT ERRORS IN PROFILOMETRY

Optical profilometers, such as scanning white light interferometers and confocal microscopes, provide high resolution measurements and are widely utilized in many fields for measuring surface topography. The techniques are capable of high-speed surface measurements with nanometer-scale repeatability, and are used in industries such as data storage, automotive, MEMS, electronics, micro-optics, and bio-medical, to name a few. The instrument works best on flat, stepped structures, and slope-dependent systematic errors can be present in the measurement of steep sloped regions. These errors can be the same order of magnitude as features on the surface to be measured. Researchers have carried out many studies of these errors from first principle analyses; however the errors depend on proprietary details of the optical design and cannot be exactly calculated from first principles. The problem is further complicated by a lack of calibration artifacts to measure the errors directly. We propose a self-calibration technique, the random ball test, for calibrating slope-dependent errors of such instruments. A simulation study validates the approach and shows that the random ball test is effective in practical limits. We demonstrate the calibration on a 50x confocal microscope and a 50x white light interferometer with a specific chosen algorithm, find a surface slope- dependent bias that increases monotonically with the magnitude of the surface slope. The uncertainty of the calibration is smaller than the observed measurement bias and is dominated by residual random noise. Effects such as distortion, drift and ball radius uncertainty were investigated to understand their contribution to the calibration uncertainty

Bridging the Gap Between People, Mobile Devices, and the Physical World

Human-computer interaction (HCI) is being revolutionized by computational design and artificial intelligence. As the diversity of user interfaces shifts from personal desktops to mobile and wearable devices, yesterday’s tools and interfaces are insufficient to meet the demands of tomorrow’s devices. This dissertation describes my research on leveraging different physical channels (e.g., vibration, light, capacitance) to enable novel interaction opportunities. We first introduce FontCode, an information embedding technique for text documents. Given a text document with specific fonts, our method can embed user-specified information (e.g., URLs, meta data, etc) in the text by perturbing the glyphs of text characters while preserving the text content. The embedded information can later be retrieved using a smartphone in real time. Then, we present Vidgets, a family of mechanical widgets, specifically push buttons and rotary knobs that augment mobile devices with tangible user interfaces. When these widgets are attached to a mobile device and a user interacts with them, the nonlinear mechanical response of the widgets shifts the device slightly and quickly. Subsequently, this subtle motion can be detected by the Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), which is commonly installed on mobile devices. Next, we propose BackTrack, a trackpad placed on the back of a smartphone to track finegrained finger motions. Our system has a small form factor, with all the circuits encapsulated in a thin layer attached to a phone case. It can be used with any off-the-shelf smartphone, requiring no power supply or modification of the operating systems. BackTrack simply extends the finger tracking area of the front screen, without interrupting the use of the front screen. Lastly, we demonstrate MoiréBoard, a new camera tracking method that leverages a seemingly irrelevant visual phenomenon, the moiré effect. Based on a systematic analysis of the moiré effect under camera projection, MoiréBoard requires no power nor camera calibration. It can easily be made at a low cost (e.g., through 3D printing) and ready to use with any stock mobile device with a camera. Its tracking algorithm is computationally efficient and can run at a high frame rate. It is not only simple to implement, but also tracks devices at a high accuracy, comparable to the state-of-the-art commercial VR tracking systems

Developing Highly Multiplexed Technology for High-throughput Super-resolution Fluorescence Microscopy

High-Throughput imaging can reconstruct complex signalling networks, reveal unknown interactions and capture rare cellular events. Simultaneously, the development of Single Molecule Localization Super Resolution Microscopy has enabled molecular-level structural information to be obtained in a single cell. But the increase in resolution comes at a trade-off for the amount of molecular species that can be imaged and the time it takes to acquire data, all of which limit the applicability of super-resolution to high-throughput work-flows. The present work details a framework to address this. It combines three independent approaches: a microscope hardware design approach to increase the amount of data that can be obtained in a Super-Resolution experiment; an optofluidics platform that can be wholly synchronized with most microscopes; and a sequential labelling framework to increase the number of species that can be imaged in Super-Resolution in a single cell. The hardware design is validated by performing Single Molecule Localization of cytoskeleton components and its throughput is shown to be up to an order of magnitude larger than a corresponding commercial system. We demonstrate a complete optofluidics platform to integrate microfluidics with a microscope, enabling live imaging, drug application, fixation, and staining in single cells synchronized with imaging protocols. Finally, we show an efficient sequential labelling protocol that is compatible with the optofluidics platform, enabling several molecular species to be imaged in the same cells. Overall, our approach increases the speed and amount of data that can be acquired in a single of Super-Resolution experiment, as well as, by performing on-line fixation, considerably improves our capacity for High-Throughput experiments in Super-Resolution imaging

Single-molecule techniques in biophysics : a review of the progress in methods and applications

Single-molecule biophysics has transformed our understanding of the fundamental molecular processes involved in living biological systems, but also of the fascinating physics of life. Far more exotic than a collection of exemplars of soft matter behaviour, active biological matter lives far from thermal equilibrium, and typically covers multiple length scales from the nanometre level of single molecules up several orders of magnitude to longer length scales in emergent structures of cells, tissues and organisms. Biological molecules are often characterized by an underlying instability, in that multiple metastable free energy states exist which are separated by energy levels of typically just a few multiples of the thermal energy scale of kBT, where kB is the Boltzmann constant and T the absolute temperature, implying complex, dynamic inter-conversion kinetics across this bumpy free energy landscape in the relatively hot, wet environment of real, living biological matter. The key utility of single-molecule biophysics lies in its ability to probe the underlying heterogeneity of free energy states across a population of molecules, which in general is too challenging for conventional ensemble level approaches which measure mean average properties. Parallel developments in both experimental and theoretical techniques have been key to the latest insights and are enabling the development of highly-multiplexed, correlative techniques to tackle previously intractable biological problems. Experimentally, technological developments in the sensitivity and speed of biomolecular detectors, the stability and efficiency of light sources, probes and microfluidics, have enabled and driven the study of heterogeneous behaviours both in vitro and in vivo that were previously undetectable by ensemble methods..

Autonomous landing of fixed-wing aircraft on mobile platforms

E n esta tesis se propone un nuevo sistema que permite la operación de aeronaves autónomas sin tren de aterrizaje. El trabajo está motivado por el interés industrial en aeronaves con la capacidad de volar a gran altitud, con más capacidad de carga útil y capaces de aterrizar con viento cruzado. El enfoque seguido en este trabajo consiste en eliminar el sistema de aterrizaje de una aeronave de ala fija empleando una plataforma móvil de aterrizaje en tierra. La aeronave y la plataforma deben sincronizar su movimiento antes del aterrizaje, lo que se logra mediante la estimación del estado relativo entre ambas y el control cooperativo del movimiento. El objetivo principal de esta Tesis es el desarrollo de una solución práctica para el aterrizaje autónomo de una aeronave de ala fija en una plataforma móvil. En la tesis se combinan nuevos métodos con experimentos prácticos para los cuales se ha desarrollado un sistema de pruebas específico. Se desarrollan dos variantes diferentes del sistema de aterrizaje. El primero presta atención especial a la seguridad, es robusto ante retrasos en la comunicación entre vehículos y cumple procedimientos habituales de aterrizaje, al tiempo que reduce la complejidad del sistema. En el segundo se utilizan trayectorias optimizadas del vehículo y sincronización bilateral de posición para maximizar el rendimiento del aterrizaje en términos de requerimientos de longitud necesaria de pista, pero la estabilidad es dependiente del retraso de tiempo, con lo cual es necesario desarrollar un controlador estabilizador ampliado, basado en pasividad, que permite resolver este problema. Ambas estrategias imponen requisitos funcionales a los controladores de cada uno de los vehículos, lo que implica la capacidad de controlar el movimiento longitudinal sin afectar el control lateral o vertical, y viceversa. El control de vuelo basado en energía se utiliza para proporcionar dicha funcionalidad a la aeronave. Los sistemas de aterrizaje desarrollados se han analizado en simulación estableciéndose los límites de rendimiento mediante múltiples repeticiones aleatorias. Se llegó a la conclusión de que el controlador basado en seguridad proporciona un rendimiento de aterrizaje satisfactorio al tiempo que suministra una mayor seguridad operativa y un menor esfuerzo de implementación y certificación. El controlador basado en el rendimiento es prometedor para aplicaciones con una longitud de pista limitada. Se descubrió que los beneficios del controlador basado en el rendimiento son menos pronunciados para una dinámica de vehículos terrestres más lenta. Teniendo en cuenta la dinámica lenta de la configuración del demostrador, se eligió el enfoque basado en la seguridad para los primeros experimentos de aterrizaje. El sistema de aterrizaje se validó en diversas pruebas de aterrizaje exitosas, que, a juicio del autor, son las primeras en el mundo realizadas con aeronaves reales. En última instancia, el concepto propuesto ofrece importantes beneficios y constituye una estrategia prometedora para futuras soluciones de aterrizaje de aeronaves.In this thesis a new landing system is proposed, which allows for the operation of autonomous aircraft without landing gear. The work was motivated by the industrial need for more capable high altitude aircraft systems, which typically suffer from low payload capacity and high crosswind landing sensitivity. The approach followed in this work consists in removing the landing gear system from the aircraft and introducing a mobile ground-based landing platform. The vehicles must synchronize their motion prior to landing, which is achieved through relative state estimation and cooperative motion control. The development of a practical solution for the autonomous landing of an aircraft on a moving platform thus constitutes the main goal of this thesis. Therefore, theoretical investigations are combined with real experiments for which a special setup is developed and implemented. Two different landing system variants are developed — the safety-based landing system is robust to inter-vehicle communication delays and adheres to established landing procedures, while reducing system complexity. The performance-based landing system uses optimized vehicle trajectories and bilateral position synchronization to maximize landing performance in terms of used runway, but suffers from time delay-dependent stability. An extended passivity-based stabilizing controller was implemented to cope with this issue. Both strategies impose functional requirements on the individual vehicle controllers, which imply independent controllability of the translational degrees of freedom. Energy-based flight control is utilized to provide such functionality for the aircraft. The developed landing systems are analyzed in simulation and performance bounds are determined by means of repeated random sampling. The safety-based controller was found to provide satisfactory landing performance while providing higher operational safety, and lower implementation and certification effort. The performance-based controller is promising for applications with limited runway length. The performance benefits were found to be less pronounced for slower ground vehicle dynamics. Given the slow dynamics of the demonstrator setup, the safety-based approach was chosen for first landing experiments. The landing system was validated in a number of successful landing trials, which to the author’s best knowledge was the first time such technology was demonstrated on the given scale, worldwide. Ultimately, the proposed concept offers decisive benefits and constitutes a promising strategy for future aircraft landing solutions

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) Mission Concept Study Final Report

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, or HabEx, has been designed to be the Great Observatory of the 2030s. For the first time in human history, technologies have matured sufficiently to enable an affordable space-based telescope mission capable of discovering and characterizing Earthlike planets orbiting nearby bright sunlike stars in order to search for signs of habitability and biosignatures. Such a mission can also be equipped with instrumentation that will enable broad and exciting general astrophysics and planetary science not possible from current or planned facilities. HabEx is a space telescope with unique imaging and multi-object spectroscopic capabilities at wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet (UV) to near-IR. These capabilities allow for a broad suite of compelling science that cuts across the entire NASA astrophysics portfolio. HabEx has three primary science goals: (1) Seek out nearby worlds and explore their habitability; (2) Map out nearby planetary systems and understand the diversity of the worlds they contain; (3) Enable new explorations of astrophysical systems from our own solar system to external galaxies by extending our reach in the UV through near-IR. This Great Observatory science will be selected through a competed GO program, and will account for about 50% of the HabEx primary mission. The preferred HabEx architecture is a 4m, monolithic, off-axis telescope that is diffraction-limited at 0.4 microns and is in an L2 orbit. HabEx employs two starlight suppression systems: a coronagraph and a starshade, each with their own dedicated instrument

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) Mission Concept Study Final Report

The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, or HabEx, has been designed to be the Great Observatory of the 2030s. For the first time in human history, technologies have matured sufficiently to enable an affordable space-based telescope mission capable of discovering and characterizing Earthlike planets orbiting nearby bright sunlike stars in order to search for signs of habitability and biosignatures. Such a mission can also be equipped with instrumentation that will enable broad and exciting general astrophysics and planetary science not possible from current or planned facilities. HabEx is a space telescope with unique imaging and multi-object spectroscopic capabilities at wavelengths ranging from ultraviolet (UV) to near-IR. These capabilities allow for a broad suite of compelling science that cuts across the entire NASA astrophysics portfolio. HabEx has three primary science goals: (1) Seek out nearby worlds and explore their habitability; (2) Map out nearby planetary systems and understand the diversity of the worlds they contain; (3) Enable new explorations of astrophysical systems from our own solar system to external galaxies by extending our reach in the UV through near-IR. This Great Observatory science will be selected through a competed GO program, and will account for about 50% of the HabEx primary mission. The preferred HabEx architecture is a 4m, monolithic, off-axis telescope that is diffraction-limited at 0.4 microns and is in an L2 orbit. HabEx employs two starlight suppression systems: a coronagraph and a starshade, each with their own dedicated instrument.Comment: Full report: 498 pages. Executive Summary: 14 pages. More information about HabEx can be found here: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/habex

Comb-mode-resolving broadband Fourier transform spectroscopy

This report demonstrates progress made to develop a robust turn-key astrocomb architecture for the calibration package of the HIRES spectrograph planned for installation on the upcoming Extremely-Large Telescope (ELT) which intends to enable novel research across a range of scientific disciplines. Here, we demonstrate progress towards a laser frequency comb covering optical and infra-red wavelength ranges and made possible by use of nonlinear interactions driven by a single stabilised mode-locked laser source. We also detail a proof-of-concept experiment carried out with a compact broadband Fourier-transform spectrometer to identify the subset of filtered frequency-comb modes, an important ancillary technology for any future broadband Fabry-P´erot-based astrocomb