Compact Non-Mechanical 3D Lidar for Safer Autonomous Driving

Caption: Researchers developed a new nonmechanical 3D lidar system, which is the size of a business card (seen in front of the system on the left). They also show that it can be used to measure the distance of poorly reflective objects and automatically track the motion of these objects. Because this light source is chip-based it could eventually enable the development of an on-chip all-solid-state 3D lidar system. Caption: The researchers demonstrated the new lidar system by showing that it can automatically recognize poorly reflective objects and track their movement using selective illumination. Credit: Susumu Noda, Kyoto UniversityMeasuring objects with varying reflectivity“Our DM-PCSEL-based 3D lidar system lets us range highly reflective and poorly reflective objects simultaneously,” said Noda.