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Smaller, cheaper lidars are being developed. One of the most promising comes in the minuscule form of a silicon chip. Prototypes have been delivered to several big automotive-component suppliers, including Delphi and ZF. If all goes well, within three years or so lidar chips should start popping up in vehicles.
[...] Typically, a lidar employs revolving mirrors to direct its laser beam, which is usually in the invisible near-infrared part of the spectrum, rather than the visible part. Commercial lidar can cost $50,000 or so a pop, but smaller, lower-powered versions are now available for $10,000 or less. A number of lidar makers, such as Velodyne, a Californian firm, are trying to develop what they call "solid-state" lidars, which are miniaturised versions with no moving parts. Some researchers are using a flash of laser light instead of a beam, and capturing the reflections with an array of tiny sensors on a chip.
Infineon, however, has taken a different tack and is using a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS). This particular MEMS was invented by Innoluce, a Dutch firm which Infineon bought in October 2016. The device consists of an oval-shaped mirror, just 3mm by 4mm, contained on a bed of silicon. The mirror is connected to actuators that use electrical resonance to make it oscillate from side to side, changing the direction of the laser beam it is reflecting. This, says Infineon, permits the full power of the laser to be used for scanning instead of its light being dispersed, as it would be in a flash-based system.
The MEMS lidar can scan up to 5,000 data points from a scene every second, and has a range of 250 metres, says Ralf Bornefeld, Infineon's head of automotive sense and control. Despite its moving mirror, he thinks it should prove as robust and reliable as any other silicon chip. In mass production and attached to, say, a windscreen, the MEMS lidar is expected to cost a carmaker less than $250. These tiny lidars would have other applications, too—in robots and drones, for example.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday January 06 2017, @09:56PM
How many secret patents will I break when I introduce my much-safer miniature short-range AESA radar?
That's the way it's supposed to go, right? Our tax dollars pay for super-toys, then we get the tech incorporated in our everyday devices...
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Friday January 06 2017, @10:17PM
[...] Toyota Motor Corp. is the first to manufacture an Automotive Phased Array Radar (APAR) that satisfies the requirements for widespread use in vehicle safety systems while also providing a wide 100-degree sensing arc capable of effectively detecting pedestrians.
-- http://www.rdmag.com/award-winners/2014/08/radar-pedestrian-safety [rdmag.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 07 2017, @12:29AM
This is true. I work for Boston Dynamics and have been moved recently from mechatronics (upon successful completion of the Gay Jewish robots HAL Goldberg and Tyrone Silverstein) to the wireless application sdivision, and the self-driving cars of the future will utilize not only the 70 GHz-ish millimeter-wave technology for near-field* sensing, but also far-field* sensing technology operating in the twenties of GHz.
* Note: "near-field" and "far-field" are very specific definitions [wikipedia.org] related to EM transmission, but in this case, I used those phrases to indicate simply closer and further away from the vehicle, respectively.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 07 2017, @12:38AM
I'd like to add that in that not-too-distant future, multiple phased arrays of those two frequency-sets working in tandem will be deployed throughout the vehicle in a complementary manner to provide full 360-degree coverage and without the clumsy dome-thingies you see on the roofs of existing prototypes.
But even though my work may enable that technology, self-driving cars are for suckers. The day stick-shifts are outlawed is the day I eat a gun-barrel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07 2017, @08:47AM
self-driving cars are for suckers.
Just what I would want, a self-driving car with subsystems designed and assembled by anti-semitic racist alcoholic internet troll.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 07 2017, @02:56PM
We cook your meals. We build your ships. We fix your cars. Some of us do design engineering, others of us code, and yet others are research scientists. We are psychiatrists, shit-shovelers, and customer-service representatives.
We are everywhere.