Status of the SCExAO instrument: Recent technology upgrades and path to a system-level demonstrator for PSI

The Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) instrument is a high-contrast imaging system installed at the 8-m Subaru Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii. SCExAO is both an instrument open for use by the international scientific community, and a testbed validating new technologies that are critical to future high-contrast imagers on Giant Segmented Mirror Telescopes (GSMTs). Since its first light, SCExAO has grown in capabilities and complexity to integrate the most advanced technologies available today in detectors, wavefront sensors, coronagraphs, real-time control, and starlight suppression. Its modular design allows for collaborators to implement their own hardware and algorithms, and to test them on-site or remotely. We are now commissioning the Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector (MKID) Exoplanet Camera (MEC) for high-speed speckle control, as well as high frame rate low noise NIR detectors such as the Leonardo SAPHIRA detector. New coronagraphic modes include the Phase Induced Amplitude Apodization Complex Mask Coronagraph (PIAACMC), or the vector Apodizing Phase Plate (vAPP) coronagraph. New wavefront control algorithms are also being tested, such as predictive control, multi-camera machine learning sensor fusion, and focal plane wavefront control. We present the status of the SCExAO instrument, with an emphasis on current collaborations and recent technology demonstrations. We also describe upgrades planned for the next few years, which will evolve SCExAO –and the whole suite of instruments on the IR Nasmyth platform of the Subaru Telescope– to become a system-level demonstrator of the Planetary Systems Imager (PSI), the high-contrast instrument for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT).