This is hard to believe, both because the receiver looks like a simple solar cell
And that's another thing I forgot to mention in the video.
The patent mentions retroreflectors, and a previous prototype does that, but I'm not sure if the latest one does.
Their entire concept from day one was doing away with one mirror in the traditional laser cavity and using the retroreflector in the receiver to complete the cavity. i.e. it becomes an "external cavity" laser.
The idea is that if you break that external cavity beam, the laser effectively automagically shuts of instantly.
Scatter is still a major danger though.
Howdy Dave,
Your point about safety is in fact the most salient reason why this device cannot ever come to market, and likely doesn't actually exist.
I did a couple of back of the envelope calculations (that I will show tomorrow) that demonstrate that this thing would far outshine the sun if it hit any surface, and it wouldn't even be visible due to the NIR nature of the laser, so you would have no idea that you were going blind until it had already happened.
I wouldn't even be able to get safety clearance for this device in my laser lab; there is no way this device is FDA cleared for anything other than some R&D environment, and if the video is actually a real prototype at the stated specifications, the poor man in the video is now almost certainly blind.