3. Market for Bragg grating sensors and associated instrumentation

For a long time, CFOs and RCFOs were aimed at niche markets, where they provided a certain added value for the user, with no equivalent in other technologies. Indeed, sales volumes remained marginal until the early 2000s. Their development was of course initially financed by certain government agencies across the Atlantic (e.g. DOE (Dept Of Energy), DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) with a military-industrial objective of maintaining technological supremacy, which de facto escaped a strictly economic logic. Then certain industrial sectors took over (e.g. the oil and gas sector). But now, responding to the needs of various market sectors, these technologies are offered for many demanding applications, for which traditional sensors are not sufficiently suitable (e.g. for reasons of electromagnetic immunity, resistance to radiation or temperature...). In fact, although the...