Here's the discussion space for the OpticsTalk: Beam steering approaches for automotive & consumer LiDARS:
Lidar is considered the primary sensor for depth perception for various applications from self-driving cars to the latest Apple iPhone. Beam steering is often the defining component of a lidar system, determining performance, size and reliability. In this talk, we will review the trade-offs that must be considered while developing a lidar-system for both mechanical and solid-state beam steering approaches. Lidar is an application specific sensor necessitating to satisfy vastly different requirements for both automotive and consumer markets. In this context, we will discuss Lumotive’s lidar system which employs a CMOS based liquid crystal metasurface (LCM) to holographically steer light over a wide field of view while maintaining a large aperture. The metasurface consists of nano-scale optical antennas to give sub-wavelength control of the phase, amplitude and polarization of light. Reconfigurable control of these antenna elements unleashes the ultimate potential of metasurfaces to achieve arbitrary wave front of light. Lumotive’s LCMs enables the lidar system to tailor the photon budget over the field of view for application specific trade-offs of range vs. resolution and software defined beam-steering, making it an ideal candidate for both automotive and consumer markets.
