5. Conclusion

In France, as in most European countries, optronics began its industrial expansion some fifty years ago in the defense sector, where it is now indispensable alongside radar, whatever the mission (surveillance, detection, fire control, countermeasures, transmissions). This discipline has also led to major advances in research, in physics, astronomy, space, etc. Over the past thirty years or so, optical fiber-based techniques have been gaining ground in the field of telecommunications, where they are uniquely capable of meeting the ever-increasing demands for information throughput.

Last but not least, optronics are currently being used in a growing number of industrial fields (machining, monitoring, process control) and energy sectors (renewable energies: photovoltaics, wind power, nuclear), as well as in the biomedical (surgery, medical imaging) and consumer (multimedia,...