Astronomical Adaptive Optics (AO) aims at correcting in real time the effect atmospheric turbulence has on the image quality of large telescopes. This is achieved by measuring the incoming turbulence with a wavefront sensor (WFS), and correcting it with a deformable mirror (DM).
A fairly new development in the field has been to use several WFSs and several DMs to increase the corrected field of view using tomographic algorithms to estimate the turbulence at several altitudes and then projecting it onto the multiple DMs, using "optimization directions".
In this talk, I will present the different modes of adaptive optics ( Ground-Layer AO, Laser Tomography AO, Multi-Conjugate AO) challenges one faces in astronomical AO tomography, like limitation of the WFSs and difficulties of the tomography itself and how they have been addressed until now.
Finally, I will present a few current research areas, to try to see where the field is going (and yes, there is some machine learning in there).