If I'm following this correctly, this is analogous to a 2 dimensional AOM, except it uses water as the refractive element instead of a piezo crystal...
Being able to scan in both x and y using a single medium is really cool. I know that AOMs have been used for very high speed scanning in the past, but it always required a pair of AOMs. (Gary Stadler used this technique with an orange HeNe laser to create the lissajous pattern used for the
"wormhole effect" visuals in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.) Even though the AOMs could manage a few degrees of deflection individually, because they had to be arranged sequentially in an X/Y configuration, the small aperture limited the total scan angle to something like .5 degrees or so. This design obviously would not have such limitations.
I didn't see any mention of the maximum deflection angle though. If it's in the low single digits, I'd say it's mostly a curiosity. But if it can manage even, say, 10 degrees, this suddenly becomes viable for all sorts of cool things. (Hi-res, raster-scanning laser TV on-the-cheap, anyone?)
Adam