A team of researchers at University of Washington has developed a much smaller and less costly form of LiDAR that has no moving parts, a breakthrough that could soon be a real game-changer for many technologies. Like radar, which is an analogous radio wave-based means of sensing, LiDAR scans across an area and the reflected signal is then received and interpreted. The research team developed a way to use quantum effects to create LiDAR on a chip, a lightweight approach that needs no moving parts.
Safe for eyes, the beam passes just barely above the surface of the chip. At the same time, an interdigital transducer (IDT) is used to excite acoustic waves on the chip. The generated vibrations steer the beam back and forth, with the movement occurring either continuously or in steps. The beam subsequently reflects off objects in the environment, returning to the LiDAR where a detector receives the beam. Software then interprets the information, building up an image of the reflected object.
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