MANY MINDEDMIT Builds a Solid-State Lidar Chip With No Moving Parts
MIT engineers have demonstrated a chip-based lidar with a wider field of view and no moving parts, published in Nature Communications. The design uses an integrated optical phased array on a silicon-photonics chip, with senior author Jelena Notaros and lead author Henry Crawford-Eng. Lidar maps surroundings in 3D by measuring the time infrared light pulses take to bounce back.
The technical trick is a repeating set of three antennas with distinct shapes. Because each shape has a different propagation coefficient, neighboring antennas do not couple, which cuts crosstalk. That reduction in interference and stray beams lets the system steer a single precise beam across a wider angle than prior silicon-photonics approaches managed.
Cost is the reason this matters for mobility. Traditional lidar relies on spinning mechanical assemblies that are expensive, bulky, and prone to wear. Moving the whole function onto a chip that can be manufactured with existing semiconductor processes points toward far cheaper sensors, and a wider field of view means fewer units needed per vehicle. Cheaper, more capable sensing is one of the gating costs of affordable self-driving and robotics, with the team also naming aerial mapping and construction monitoring as uses.
The caveat is that this is a research demonstration, not a product, and the improvements are measured against earlier silicon-photonics methods rather than commercial systems. Range, resolution, and durability at automotive scale remain to be proven. Watch whether the antenna design carries from the lab bench into a manufacturable module.
Source: ScienceDaily