Automated Design of Multi-element Optical Systems for Various Purposes

Designing an arbitrary multi-element optical system is a complex and multidimensional task that cannot be solved analytically and requires significant human experience and effort. Therefore, there is currently a demand for effective and powerful software tools for automated optical systems design by optical engineers, researchers, and scientists. It is demonstrated here that the developed specialized software PODIL, with modern global optimization algorithms implemented, can significantly accelerate the optical design process. This approach has been successfully applied in designing various imaging optical systems with both constant and variable parameters. The obtained results confirm the high image quality achieved in the developed optical systems, including an eyepiece with long eye relief for a high-resolution microdisplay, a fast multi-lens orthoscopic prime objective, a short-wave infrared lens, a zoom riflescope with extended parameters, an aspherical catadioptric lens for middle-wave infrared, and wide-angle eyepieces with corrected F-theta distortion.