Leap in lidar could improve safety, security of new technology

Date:
July 6, 2020
Source:
University of Colorado at Boulder
Summary:
Researchers have developed a new silicon chip with major
applications in lidar systems for self-driving cars and smart
phones.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Whether it's on top of a self-driving car or embedded inside the latest
gadget, Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) systems will likely play an important role in our technological future, enabling vehicles to 'see'
in real-time, phones to map three-dimensional images and enhancing
augmented reality in video games.


==========================================================================
The challenge: these 3-D imaging systems can be bulky, expensive
and hard to shrink down to the size needed for these up-and-coming applications. But University of Colorado Boulder researchers are one
big step closer to a solution.

In a new paper, published in Optica, they describe a new silicon chip --
with no moving parts or electronics -- that improves the resolution and scanning speed needed for a lidar system.

"We're looking to ideally replace big, bulky, heavy lidar systems
with just this flat, little chip," said Nathan Dostart, lead author on
the study, who recently completed his doctorate in the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Current commercial lidar systems use large, rotating mirrors to steer
the laser beam and thereby create a 3-D image. For the past three years, Dostart and his colleagues have been working on a new way of steering
laser beams called wavelength steering -- where each wavelength, or
"color," of the laser is pointed to a unique angle.

They've not only developed a way to do a version of this along two
dimensions simultaneously, instead of only one, they've done it with
color, using a "rainbow" pattern to take 3-D images. Since the beams are
easily controlled by simply changing colors, multiple phased arrays can
be controlled simultaneously to create a bigger aperture and a higher resolution image.



========================================================================== "We've figured out how to put this two-dimensional rainbow into a little
teeny chip," said Kelvin Wagner, co-author of the new study and professor
of electrical and computer engineering.

The end of electrical communication Autonomous vehicles are currently
a $50 billion dollar industry, projected to be worth more than $500
billion by 2026. While many cars on the road today already have some
elements of autonomous assistance, such as enhanced cruise control and automatic lane-centering, the real race is to create a car that drives
itself with no input or responsibility from a human driver. In the past
15 years or so, innovators have realized that in order to do this cars
will need more than just cameras and radar -- they will need lidar.

Lidar is a remote sensing method that uses laser beams, pulses of
invisible light, to measure distances. These beams of light bounce
off everything in their path, and a sensor collects these reflections
to create a precise, three- dimensional picture of the surrounding
environment in real time.

Lidar is like echolocation with light: it can tell you how far away each
pixel in an image is. It's been used for at least 50 years in satellites
and airplanes, to conduct atmospheric sensing and measure the depth of
bodies of water and heights of terrain.



========================================================================== While great strides have been made in the size of lidar systems, they
remain the most expensive part of self-driving cars by far -- as much
as $70,000 each.

In order to work broadly in the consumer market one day, lidar must
become even cheaper, smaller and less complex. Some companies are trying
to accomplish this feat using silicon photonics: An emerging area in
electrical engineering that uses silicon chips, which can process light.

The research team's new finding is an important advancement in silicon
chip technology for use in lidar systems.

"Electrical communication is at its absolute limit. Optics has to come
into play and that's why all these big players are committed to making
the silicon photonics technology industrially viable," said Milos Popovi?, co-author and associate professor of engineering at Boston University.

The simpler and smaller that these silicon chips can be made -- while
retaining high resolution and accuracy in their imaging -- the more technologies they can be applied to, including self-driving cars and smartphones.

Rumor has it that the upcoming iPhone 12 will incorporate a lidar camera,
like that currently in the iPad Pro. This technology could not only
improve its facial recognition security, but one day assist in creating climbing route maps, measuring distances and even identifying animal
tracks or plants.

"We're proposing a scalable approach to lidar using chip technology. And
this is the first step, the first building block of that approach,"
said Dostart, who will continue his work at NASA Langley Research Center
in Virginia.

"There's still a long way to go."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
University_of_Colorado_at_Boulder. Original written by Kelsey
Simpkins. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Nathan Dostart, Bohan Zhang, Anatol Khilo, Michael Brand, Kenaish Al
Qubaisi, Deniz Onural, Daniel Feldkhun, Kelvin H. Wagner, Milos A.

Popović. Serpentine optical phased arrays for scalable
integrated photonic lidar beam steering. Optica, 2020; 7 (6):
726 DOI: 10.1364/ OPTICA.389006 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200706140913.htm

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