OpticsTalk: Beam steering approaches for automotive & consumer LiDARS

  • 26 January 2021
  • 7 replies
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Userlevel 6
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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.


7 replies

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Thank you to Prasad for hosting today's OpticsTalk, as well as to everyone who attended and contributed to the dicussion! Attached you'll find the slide deck that Prasad presented. Post any follow-up questions you have here on this forum thread!

Userlevel 6
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Hi Kotya


Sorry but no we didn't record the talk. The idea is to make these talk informal so that everyone feels free to ask questions, and so we don't record them.


Sandrine

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Here are a few resources regarding the OpticStudio modeling part:


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Hi Sandrine, is the recording available? Could you post the link please?

Userlevel 7
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I missed the talk but the PDF is great, thank you!

Userlevel 2
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Hi Everyone, 


Thanks again to those of you who attended January's OpticsTalk on Beam steering approaches for automotive & consumer LiDARS! For anyone who is interested, last week, Zemax hosted another LiDAR-related event. This time, it was a webinar titled, Industry Insights: A Conversation with Sense Photonics, hosted by Sanjay Gangadhara, Chief Technology Officer at Zemax, and Christine Cordeiro, Technical Manager of Optical Engineering at Sense Photonics. If you're interested in viewing this webinar, check it out here.


Abstract:


LiDAR is an enabling sensor technology for autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, and robotics. However, large-scale adoption is hindered by cost and robustness. Sense Photonics has developed systems that address these challenges through a camera-like flash architecture, which eliminates moving parts and allows for simple optical and emitter designs that are robust and manufacturable at low cost. VCSEL arrays created using Micro Transfer Printing illuminate the field of view, and 2D SPAD sensor arrays capture high resolution range data from the entire scene at once. Flash architecture with no moving parts enables robust LiDAR with lower cost to facilitate large-scale automation.


Cheers,

Nick

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Nick's post reminded me that we also have a new interesting resource for that subject. Check our new article 'How to design DOE lens or metalens in OpticStudio'. Enjoy your reading!

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