Data-driven methods to assist lens design have recently begun to emerge; in particular, under the form of lens design extrapolation to find starting points (lenses and freeform reflective system). I proposed a trip over the years to better understand why the AI have been applied first to the starting point problems and where we are going in the future.

The correction of modern microscope objectives is not usually discussed in literature. We have reported a system review and summarized the design principles in a series of papers in 2019. Here we are introducing the systematic view of microscope objective design with an extension of the database till 2021. Furthermore, a systematic synthesis approach aided by AI will also be discussed.

Atmospheric pressure plasma jet machining technology not only provides a flexible and efficient way to generate and correct optical freeform surfaces made of fused silica, it can also be applied as a surface smoothing or polishing technique. Thermal plasma jet treatment leads to softening and redistribution of the material. An accurate temperature regime during the process is inevitable to achieve a uniformly smoothed surface. The possibilities for in-process temperature control are demonstrated. Surface roughness values can be significantly reduced by a factor of 1000 depending on the initial roughness of the ground surface.

We developed an algorithm to estimate the performance of an optical system based on the errors of its individual components. After a short training period with classical simulated systems, the performance evaluation for tolerancing could be accelerated by a factor of about three million. Additionally, we propose a probability-based sorting algorithm to combine individual, erroneous components in order to compensate for the tolerance budget within the system and increase the overall yield.