An innovative nanophotonic information processing concept implementing cogent micro/nanosensors for space robotics

Cogent sensors, defined as sensors that are capable of performing the transformation of raw data into information, are shown to be of the essence for realization of the long sought-after autonomous robots for space applications. A strongly miniaturized integration of sensing and information processing systems is needed for cogent sensors designed for autonomous sensing—information processing (IP)—actuating behavior. It is shown that the recently developed field of quantum holography (QH), stemming from geometric quantization of any holographic processes through the Heisenberg Group (G) and deeply different, as stressed in detail, from other meanings of “quantum holography” in the literature, supplies the nanophotonic tools for designing and assembling an associative memory (AM) as the brain implementing such strong cogency. An AM is designed through a free-space interconnected large planar multilayer architecture of quantum well-based two-port neurons implementing a shift register on the manifold of G, and whose input consists of photonic holograms from high frequency pulsed microlasers in the infrared band of em or em-transduced outside signals. The optoelectronics as relative, integrated into a hybrid chip involving photonic detectors, microlasers and electronic components for the clock control system, would allow cycle times as short as 30 ns with the large spatial bandwidth available in photonics. IP through QH concerns the encoding and decoding of holographic interference patterns, not of mere binary digital logical (syntactic) information. Accordingly, QH defines on the G's manifold an IP paradigm where information as experimental knowledge is processed; i.e., IP concerns both syntax and semantics. It is shown that such QH–neural brain would cogently deal with spurious signals as random noise that would be caused to die out on the way to the intended target through parallel massive and real-time IP.

► Heisenberg Group (HG)-based Quantum Holography (QH) is proposed for nanophotonics.
► HG is shown to be a powerful information processor (IP) for QH-working nanosensors.
► Both syntactic and semantic computing can be so achieved for nanophotonic sensors.
► QH with HG as IP show to weave machine intelligence and sensing into cogent sensors.
► A nanophotonic neural network is designed to implement cogency on such principles.