For some reason I start thinking about editorials when I am traveling or during discussions with friends and colleagues. As those who read my past editorials know, I am a pilot. Given the chance, I will fly to a destination versus drive. However, this time a hurricane was making its way towards Florida here in the U.S., the starting point of my trip, bringing rain, gusty winds, and difficult conditions for flying. The timing of this storm was not great for flying home at the end of the trip. Although flying would have been one-third the time, my husband and I decided to drive to our destination. Even with all the models for weather predictions, the process of predicting the routing for hurricanes or other storms is still a challenge. I don’t pretend to know all of the elements that are used in the models, but optical systems contribute to the data that is collected.

Driving through Florida and Georgia to get to our destination was interesting. All along the route are personal memories and locations of historical events that have shaped the various regions and my own life. We began the trip from Florida early in the morning and drove through some beautiful fields with mist and fog. The fog reminded me of a LiDAR project developed at Georgia Tech for early fog detection as part of an early warning of hazardous driving conditions in south Georgia. The U.S. Department of Transportation has a requirement to maintain a level of reflectivity for highway signs. Numerous optical techniques have been created to measure reflectivity efficiently for road application. This road trip provided numerous examples of how applied optics is so prevalent in our daily lives and dependencies.

One example is LiDAR. It shows up everywhere! After 13 years, I finally upgraded my car. My new car has automatic cruise control, anti-collision, and cameras for every other function you can think of to get as close to an autonomous vehicle as possible without the legal designation of fully autonomous. Looking at the other cars on the road, I wonder how many people understand the role optics has played in making cars safer. Applied Optics has published several issues over the decades related to the automotive industry, beginning in 1969 [1] to 2021 [2], with numerous paper contributions in between.

The southern part of the state of Georgia and the mid- to northern part of Florida has a lot of agricultural activity, which is another application area that relies on optics for crop inspection before and after harvest. Sometimes the research behind these technologies and applications is published in the scientific literature or even makes the news and in other cases, due to proprietary concerns, the discoveries do not get published.

As Paul Harvey used to say, “And now for the rest of the story.” Although plans had to change, and the rest of the story is not that interesting, it was a beautiful sunny day as we drove home from our trip, but the remnants of the storm were obvious by the debris, flooding, and limited fuel supplies. Seeing the power trucks along the road reminded me of the potential use of LiDAR for remote inspection of power lines.

I find being the editor of a journal that highlights so much diverse technology to be inspiring. The next time you are on a road trip, be sure to look around at the evidence of our applied optics community’s work in use and remember to be flexible and enjoy any rerouting that life events might bring your way.