Cheap Lidar on a Chip Puts Self-Driving Cars in the Fast Lane

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"... We expect to be turning our creations into actual products and producing large numbers of samples for the automotive industry in 2025.

We are currently working on two different versions of our lidar: a long-range version intended to be mounted at the front of the car for use at highway speeds and a short-range version with a wider field of view to provide complete coverage all around the vehicle. The two sensors have different optical phased arrays in their photonic ICs, while sharing the same back-end signal processing.

We expect that relatively low-cost lidar sensors from some of our competitors, such as Cepton and Luminar, will begin showing up in some top-of-the line cars as early as next year. ..."

Lidar on a Chip Puts Self-Driving Cars in the Fast Lane - IEEE Spectrum Commercial sensors will be reliable, tiny, and affordable

The authors’ lidar consists of two parts: a silicon photonic chip and a semiconductor chip [electron micrograph at left]. The latter contains the electronics that control the many photonic elements. A higher-magnification micrograph details the tiny copper bumps that are used to make the electrical connections between these two chips [right].