Laser Focus

Lasers are fascinating devices.  My formal experience with them started back when I was the divisional champion in Lazer Tag.  I owe everything to lasers.  Those battles helped me become the man I am today.  Without learning strategy, tactics, and how to shield my laser receiver from incoming blasts, I wouldn’t know how to tackle tough business situations.  Lasers can also provide a bright and powerful aesthetic to any environment while being warm to the touch.  I have been trying to install lasers on our competition cars for years because I feel that would give us an advantage.  We could just wait at the start finish line and melt our competitors’ tires.  That would make winning so much more rewarding.  The only issue has been fitting the power supply into the car with enough space remaining for the driver.  The introduction of autonomous cars this year will alleviate that problem.

Major auto manufacturers have been getting involved in the laser light field over the past couple of years.  Two of those, Audi and BMW, have products that are supposed to be ready for the consumer market.

The dangerous red outline differentiates real laser lights from counterfeit knock offs.

As you can see from the simple illustration above, Audi’s laser lights are safe as long as you stay out of the designated red zone.  Failing to heed that warning can result in dismemberment and/or severe burns.  I’m sure future versions will remove that dangerous barrier, but it could work well for us the way it is.

The lasers are on the right.

BMW’s solution is much safer for pedestrians and other motorists because it doesn’t have the red border that can ruin your day.  Lasers might become the future of automotive lighting in the United States if the FDA and NHTSA wake up from the late 1960s.  There is a chance that new breakthrough products better than lasers could be developed before the current laser lights become legal.  This delay has given AcMo an opportunity to exploit laser lighting for other markets before the luxury European car buying market figures out the true power of lasers.

The biggest safety concern with these laser headlights seems to be the potential for blinding—perhaps permanently—oncoming drivers, which is called dazzle.  While that is bad for motorists, it works fine for our purposes.  AcMo has developed a laser lighting system that only dazzles.  It is perfect for in-store displays that need to pop to compensate for a lack of substance.  We use lasers to make our entire product line dazzle.

The retail sector shouldn’t be the only one to benefit from lasers.  We are pushing hard to enter other markets that depend on vibrant displays, such as art museums.  We were fortunate that a batch of Bleu-Ray® players "fell" off of a truck last week.  Since we needed to move these things fast, and we wanted to play with lasers, this was an automatic decision.  Lasers are lasers, right?

Once I channeled my hibernating Lazer Tag champion mentality, AcMo was ready to innovate.  We built a laser guided lighting system to improve visitor engagement with museum displays.  The guidance system is still in beta, and it will remain in beta until we can figure out why it keeps identifying exhibits and museum patrons as targets.  This shouldn’t have been a problem since our modified lasers are only set to stun, but the lights keep burning visitors instead of stunning them in our limited test runs.

In their present form, the lights are excellent theft deterrents and perimeter protection programs, but the health risks are too high for a widespread release.  Perhaps it was a bad idea to test the 1st generation system at a wax museum, but we learn from our mistakes.  I think tungsten flooring and special wall coatings might enable the lasers to become a secondary heat source in addition to their other capabilities.  That would reduce heating costs, and that reduction may just compensate for the increased energy requirements.

I would never have taken the shipment of Bleu-Ray® players if I had known how much trouble it would be to repurpose the lasers.  I got caught dreaming instead of thinking, but I’m learning to recognize that so I can avoid making the same mistake every single time.

We decided to do a surprise install after much internal deliberation.  We felt this would provide the most significant introduction to the new systems, and once we had them installed it would be too difficult for the museum staff to remove them without being injured.  It took the install team all night to install the laser lights in one of the galleries.  The team was able to escape in the morning before any of the daytime staff had arrived.  All we had to do was wait for the lights to be activated and then enjoy the show.

The damage was minimal thanks to an extreme power failure moments after the gallery lights were initiated.  It appears that the wiring requirements for our laser lighting system are a bit higher than the museum can handle.  I believe that error saved a few people from suffering more significant burns, and it saved us from destroying any of the artwork.  Next time I have to remember to check the auxiliary generator since someone forgot to plug it in before we initiated our test.

At this time, AcMo’s laser lighting division will have to postpone future development until we can procure more reliable lasers.  Since it is critical to reuse all of our resources whenever possible, I will be fulfilling my dream by installing the lasers on all of our competition cars before the season begins.  I anticipate this upgrade will make us unbeatable on or off track.