Seminarios de Instrumentación
Durham Adaptive Optics (DAO) real-time controller
Abstract
Durham Adaptive Optics (DAO) is a powerful and flexible software solution for adaptive optics systems. DAO enables real-time correction of wavefront distortions caused by atmospheric turbulence and optical aberrations, improving the image quality of ground-based telescopes. DAO takes a hardware-agnostic approach to processing pipelines, supporting distributed heterogeneous compute environments. Its high flexibility allows seamless integration with various hardware systems and configurations, accommodating different wavefront sensors (such as Shack-Hartmann and pyramid sensors), actuators (including deformable mirrors, tip-tilt mirrors, and spatial light modulators), and other components.
The presentation will cover the software's flexible architecture, which enables it to be integrated with a variety of hardware systems and configurations. We will showcase DAO’s user base and how DAO has been used to solve their adaptive optics real-time control needs. These examples will demonstrate DAO’s efficient data handling, parallel processing techniques, low latency, and minimal jitter, whilst emphasising its capacity to scale to AO systems of all size, from laboratory-based research projects to ELT-scale facility class systems.
About the talk
Universidad de Durham
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About the speaker
Dr. David Barr holds an Engineering doctorate in Adaptive Optics real-time control for ELT scale telescopes, achieved from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh and collaboration with the UK Astronomy Technology Centre. Following its completion in 2016, he relocated to Munich, where he spent six years at the European Southern Observatory. During this time, he contributed to the delivery of projects such as SPHERE, AOF, and ERIS, alongside working on ELT projects. Transitioning to Durham University in 2022, he assumed leadership of a team responsible for implementing the adaptive optics control system for HARMONI. Additionally, he co-created DAO, a new RTC in collaboration with Sylvain Centre, now widely adopted in labs and telescopes worldwide. Currently, he is the Head of Software and Real-Time Control at the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation at Durham University.