Adaptive control of Ladar systems using spatial index of prior Ladar return data

An adaptive ladar system comprising:

• a ladar transmitter configured to transmit a plurality of ladar pulse shots into a coordinate space toward a plurality of range points;
• a ladar receiver configured to receive incident light and detect ladar returns based on the received incident light;
• a memory configured to store data about a plurality of ladar returns from prior ladar pulse shots in a spatial index, the spatial index associating the ladar return data with a plurality of locations in the coordinate space, wherein the spatial index comprises a tree structure having a root node, a plurality of branches, and a plurality of leaf nodes, wherein the leaf nodes associate the ladar return data with corresponding locations in the coordinate space;
• and
• a processor configured to (1) identify a range point location in the coordinate space for a new ladar pulse shot for the ladar system, (2) adaptively control an operation of the ladar system by defining a parameter value for use by the ladar system with respect to the new ladar pulse shot based on an analysis of the ladar return data in the spatial index associated with locations within a defined vicinity of the identified range point location, and (3) repeat the identify and adaptively control operations on a shot-by-shot basis for a plurality of new ladar pulse shots;
• wherein a shot list defines a scheduled order of the new ladar pulse shots, and wherein the processor is further configured to, for each of a plurality of the new ladar pulse shots on the shot list, (1) traverse the tree structure based on the identified range point location for that new ladar pulse shot to identify leaf nodes in the tree structure that include ladar return data associated with locations within the defined vicinity of the identified range point location for that new ladar pulse shot, (2) extract ladar return data from the identified leaf nodes for that new ladar pulse shot, (3) pre-compute a factor for the parameter value corresponding to that new ladar pulse shot based on a plurality of data values within the extracted ladar return data for that new ladar pulse shot, and (4) compute the defined parameter value for use by the ladar system with respect to the new ladar pulse shot based on the pre-computed factor for that new ladar pulse shot.