US Patent Issued to Raytheon on July 29 for "Negative obstacle detector using micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) micro-mirror array (MMA) beam steering" (Arizona Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,372,658, issued on July 29, was assigned to Raytheon Co. (Arlington, Va.).

"Negative obstacle detector using micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) micro-mirror array (MMA) beam steering" was invented by Gerald P. Uyeno (Tucson, Ariz.), Sean D. Keller (Tucson, Ariz.) and Benn H. Gleason (Tucson, Ariz.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An obstacle detector uses a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) Micro-mirror Array (MMA) for scanning one or more laser beams over a field of regard to identify negative obstacles in the path of an autonomous vehicle or in other limited visual environments. In certain examples, the MEMS MMA may be segmented...