The opportunities for using Lidar are plenty, most notably in automotive, where it is used in ADAS and in autonomous driving, providing a better resolution than radar.
Over the last decade, pushed by the automotive market, the price of Lidar systems has come down by more than an order of magnitude. Solid-state lidars are promising in bringing the cost down by another order of magnitude. And they’re more robust, with no moving parts, and smaller.
PICs (photonic integrated circuits) offer opportunities for lidar advancement. In solid-state lidars, PICs can be used as the laser source. When combined with the on-chip components typically used in communications technology, pulsed lasers and frequency-modulated lasers can be realised. As an example, Blackmore are bringing a frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) lidar to the market, based on PICs. Such a lidar provides both range and velocity measurements by dint of the Doppler effect. Coherent detection allows for highly sensitive measurements, with high dynamic range. An added advantage is that PICs are designed for operation around wavelengths of 1550 nm, which is a sweet spot for lidar due to eye-safety requirements. This allows the range to be extended significantly, to over 200 m, according to Luminar.
