Differentiable detector

[kaanaksit]

In our examples, where we try bouncing light towards a fixed target, our target is defined as a single point along XYZ axes. However, in many cases in Optics and Computer Graphics, we may want to design surfaces to resemble a specific distribution of intensities over a plane (e.g., a detector or a camera sensor). For example, the work by Schwartzburg et al. designs optical surfaces such that when light refracts, the distribution of these intensities forms an image at some target plane. To be able to replicate such works with Odak, odak needs a detector that is differentiable. This detector could be added as a class in the odak.learn.raytracing submodule, and a new unit test could be added as test/test_learn_detector.py. To add these to odak, you can rely on the pull request feature on GitHub. You can also create a new engineering note for arbitrary surfaces in docs/notes/raytracing_detector.md.