Self-driving eyes, the size of a rider’s nails…

LiDAR is a remote sensing technology that measures the distance to a distant object by measuring the time to reflect and return the laser light while shining in the form of a pulse. Until now, most of them were the size of a palm or the size that should be held with both hands, but as the development of small chips accelerates, it is expected to continue to decrease.

Rider is said to be a historical technology that was created 50 years ago to map the moon and measure the distance between the moon and the earth during the Apollo 15 mission. Riders are mounted on aircraft and used to measure the distance to the ground, but there are reports that this use played a role in discovering the remains of ancient civilizations.

Even in self-driving vehicles, riders cannot be left out. Apple’s Project Titan used a large, fragile 100 million rider. The miniaturized, high-resolution rider used in platform 3.0, a self-driving test vehicle developed by companies like Toyota, is also the size of a palm, but still needs improvement.

It is said that VOYANT PHOTONICS has devised an optical phase array that allows light to pass through without moving parts with a technology called silicon photonics using silicon. He said he succeeded in developing a small chip that could be placed on a finger without having to use hundreds of parts that make up the rider.

Not only the size, but also the cost can be reduced by a tenth, so it can be applied not only to automobiles, but also to drones, robots, factories, homes, and even smartphones. Voyant Photonics reportedly raised $4.3 million in development funding for this research. Through this, it is planning to explore various fields such as aircraft and mobile phone manufacturers, as well as creating autonomous vehicles. Building a rider requires other parts besides chips, but in the future, a day may come when a smaller rider will be used to handle things like radio controls. Related information can be found here .