General MACOS Interface (GMI) for Modeling and Analysis for Controlled Optical Systems (MACOS)

About this technology

Overview

The General MACOS Interface (GMI) enables the use of MATLAB as a front-end for JPLs critical optical modeling package MACOS. MACOS is JPL's in-house optical modeling software, which has proven to be a superb tool for advanced systems engineering of optical systems. GMI, coupled with MACOS, allows for seamless interfacing with modeling tools from other disciplines to make possible integration of dynamics, structures, and thermal models with the addition of control systems for deformable optics and other actuated optics. GMI is a significant enhancement for MACOS as it provides a simple but effective framework to interface with MACOS using MATLAB as computational development platform, which, for instance, allows one to quickly develop and analyze the performance of the control algorithms, the influence of surface imperfections due to fabrication tolerances and polishing abilities, the thermal impact upon the optical system and/or the ability to align the optical system. GMI was originally developed for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project, as part of the Wavefront Sensing & Control and alignment aspect during the I&T phase at Johnson Space Center (JSC).