Beam Steering Device Using Liquid Crystal Polarization Gratings

An imaging device comprising an image sensor, the imaging device comprising:

• one or more liquid crystal polarization gratings (LCPGs), wherein the one or more LCPGs are controllable to apply a deflection to the electromagnetic beam such that the electromagnetic beam is directed from a different field of view (FOV) other than the non-deflected FOV onto the image sensor;
• and
• an image sensor comprising a plurality of pixels, responsive to electromagnetic beams directed by the one or more LCPGs so as to be incident thereon to generate a signal representative of the incident electromagnetic beams,
• an imaging controller for controlling the one or more LCPGs so as to direct electromagnetic beams from a first and a second FOV onto each of the plurality of pixels to create a first and a second intermediate image, respectively, so as to create a combined higher resolution image output of the image sensor.

An imaging device comprising an image sensor comprising a plurality of pixels and having a native field of view (FOV) and a native resolution, the imaging device comprising:

• an image controller;
• imaging optics including one or more controllable liquid crystal polarization gratings (LCPGs), wherein the one or more LCPGs are controllable by the image controller to steer light onto the image sensor from across a wider FOV than the native FOV to obtain images from across the wider FOV;
• and
• a determination unit for determining a region-of-interest (ROI) within the wider FOV and corresponding to a subset of the wider FOV such that the ROI can be imaged with a higher resolution than the native resolution of the image sensor.