Russian laser to set world record

Russia’s Ulichniye Lasery (Street Lasers, a developer of lidars on the basis of acoustooptics for various applications including unmanned devices) which manufactures the most powerful laser projectors in the world, is getting prepared to beat the world record by lighting mountains in Nevada (USA) from a distance of five kilometers at the Burning Man festival. Ulichniye Lasery is also developing an acoustooptical scanner to explore Moon surface. Anton Usachev, company cofounder and CEO, revealed the details to Invest Foresight.

Ulichniye Lasery’s CV

Ulichniye Lasery Limited Liability Company was registered in 2007 by Anton Usachev and Kirill Makhnyr, graduates of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. According to Kontur.Focus service, each of the partners holds a 50% share. Ulichniye Lasery also has a joint business with Laser Standard design bureau owned by Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and six individuals. Last year, the revenues of the company reached RUR 6 mio ($105K).

Back in 2007, Joint Stock Financial Corporation Sistema owned by Russian billionaire Vladimir Evtushenkov, placed an order with Ulichniye Lasery for a microprojector to be incorporated in a mobile phone to create an interface on any surface. The idea failed though and hence Sistema did not become an anchor investor. Yet, in 2009 Bosch presented a similar microprojector under the brandname of Microvision and in 2011 launched its mass production and sales. The technology is also used by Google Glass, for instance.

“We thought of coming up with a product which could be sold as a separate ultimate device. Finally, in 2010 we produced a large street laser projector for illuminating buildings facades”, Usachev says.

The initial funding of RUR 200K ($6.7K) for the development was provided by Bortnik Fund for Innovations Support and some money came from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. The laser projector worth RUR 3 mio ($100K) was then leased for two years. The first client was Genser, a car seller. It was followed by the Savings Bank of Russia and Torgovy Kvartal shopping mall in Domodedovo, Moscow Region. They used the projector for illuminating their advertising signboards and logos.

“Clients can see our signs when driving along Moscow Ringroad. The laser projector rent price is much lower than the price of a billboard by the road”, Sergei Tukalin, Sales Director at Genser, told Rossiya 24 TV channel.

Since 2016, the company started getting customers in Japan, Germany and Latvia.

Ulichniye Lasery now manufactures the most powerful and expensive fullcolor laser projectors in the world which can demonstrate a video recording at a distance of 1.5 kilometers by employing acoustooptics. By 2017, the company had developed and sold 14 laser projectors, most of them being much different from each other.

“If we get six more new models, we can launch some mass production”, Usachev explains “We are now the only company in the world which manufactures laser scanners of a million pixels per second running speed”.

Ulichniye Lasery produced laser installations for the Intervals (Nizhny Novgorod), Science Fest, Gamma, and Light Night (St. Petersburg) music festivals, laser water show at the Russian jet ski championship, and took part in the Light Circle festival (Moscow). At the Festival of Lights (Berlin) in 2017 the company presented its laser performance and at the Human Engeneering Lab at MARS modern art center in Moscow.

In 2017 the company arranged a number of test and advertizing installations both in Russia and abroad (in Riga, Bratislava, Berlin, Görlitz, Munich, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Sapporo). In August, Ulichniye Lasery intends to set a world record by illuminating mountains in the State of Nevada (USA), at the Burning Man festival, from a distance of five kilometers. That will be done in collaboration with Radugadesign multimedia design studio. In Nevada, in a large desert, the festival participants will present various art projects. Ulichniye Lasery intends to locate its projector in the middle of the desert at a distance of five kilometer to the nearest mountain.

Moon life

Usachev and his team, while dealing with laser projects, came up with a spin off product, a lidar.

“We scan the area by using light. If the data is collected from each lit point (and we have a million of them), we get a lidar or a 3D videocamera”, the businessman explains.

The largest market for lidars is the vision system for unmanned cars. Such a system includes two modules. One is responsible for where a vehicle is going. The other is responsible for a vehicle not to hit anything, i.e. for the safety. In 2014, Ulichniye Lasery produced a laser tracker which is in charge of a vehicle movement. It was slow with information being renewed fifteen times a second, but it still employed a laser, whereas other manufacturers developed lidars based on video cameras, i.e. on a passive surveillance. In about a month, a laser lidar equipped vehicle was able to drive. The customer (a military agency whose name is not disclosed) terminated funding of the project which thus ceased to exist. Yet the technology had been already developed.

By now, the first module of the pilotless vision system in charge of the path of motion, has been produced by several companies. Yet the second one which is to distinguish items nearby a car, was developed by one company only, Velodyne of the US, owned by MIT graduates. By now, there is no lidar capable of maintaining the speed of a UGV at 50 to 60 kilometers per hour. The maximum speed which can be now ensured is below 20 km/h since for that a million pixels a second must be received and processed – at the very least.

Currently, Ulichniye Lasery develops acoustooptical scanners for the State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom), Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, and a private investors whose name is not disclosed. So far, funding is rather modest with each contract being financed within RUR 500K ($8.5K) a year. Within an international space project, Next Generation Program: Skoltech-MIT Joint Projects, Skolkovo Institute takes part in designing a device to explore the dark side of the Moon. Some water was discovered at the Moon. Quite possibly, there may be living organisms in that water. To find that out, a lunar rover will need, among other things, an acoustooptical scanner to establish if there are any organisms in the water. Such a scanner must be very fast and accurate, with a million pixels per second resolution. That may be ensured by acoustooptics but can not be provided by competitors’ reflective optics. The scanner as an element of a compact mass spectrometer designed by Skolkovo Institute, shall be available within few years. It will then be delivered to the Moon to search for living organisms there.

For the State Atomic Energy Corporation Ulichniye Lasery design a 3D video camera to be used for the sites security. Such a camera processes a million light beams a second and produces an online 3D image of the area which is incessantly renewed. Usachev did not elaborate on the purposes of such a security system for Rosatom. Customers never unveil all project details though.

Satellite communication

In a while, every vehicle will have a lidar installed. It will communicate the information on the environment to a cloud. The cloud will analyze the data submitted by all vehicles to produce an online picture of the environment. That will improve road safety. If one vehicle detects a source of danger while another vehicle could not detect it, the data supplied to the cloud will prevent an accident thus helping all vehicles. Yet for such a system to operate, there should be satellite communication among satellites. At the moment, it is not available. Data must be transmitted at 10 Gbps over hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Currently, satellites can only retransmit earth-satellite-earth signals. Unlike reflective optics, acoustooptic lidar ensures extraordinary precision and can accurately locate receivers and transmit signals at the required distances, Anton Usachev claims.

Such a communication system has not been developed yet, but several companies are already engaged in the development process. The information network will also be required for a broad implementation of the facial recognition technology. No order for the satellite communication system has been placed yet, but Ulichniye Lasery can produce it. Yet in some decade from now, when UGVs start driving at 100 km/h, such a satellite communication will be necessary.