Researchers Tout Low-Power LIDAR with 30-Foot Range

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new form of LIDAR (light radar) capable of capturing high-resolution 3-D images at distances up to 10 meters 10 times the range of typical low-power LIDAR systems today.

The developers will present details about the system in San Jose, Calif., next week during The Optical Society of America's Conference on Laser and Electro-Optics (CLEO:2014).

They tell IEEE Spectrum they expect to eventually be able to package an entire 3-D imaging system into a 3x3-millimeter silicon chip. Their first-generation system is roughly 3x3x11 inches.

The team says it was able to dramatically reduce its LIDAR's size, power and cost by using micro-electrical-mechanical system (MEMS) tunable vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. The configuration is tuned to use the MEMS at its resonance point, thus amplifying the system's signal with only modest power consumption.

The technology could eliminate the need for self-driving cars to carry bulky cameras, such as the units atop Google's autonomous test vehicles. Developers say the system also could be used by interactive video games to sense the body moments of players several feet away from the sensor.