Robot Navigation Using a Peristrophic Holographic Memory

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in holographic memories. Most of the recent experiments in holographic storage have been in LiNbO3, in which up to 10,000 holograms have been stored in one location [1], or the DuPont photopolymer in which 1,000 holograms were stored [2], A technique called peristrophic multiplexing was combined with conventional angle multiplexing to store the 1,000 holograms in the polymer which has a thickness of only 100 microns. Most of the development of holographic memories is aimed at digital computer storage. In this paper we focus instead on the application of holographic memories to image processing. Specifically we use the peristrophic system as an optical database to store images to navigate a small car autonomously along specified paths. This experiment suggests that the two best features of holographic storage, capacity and parallel access, can be put to good use in real time machine vision applications.