From mechanical to solid state LiDAR

Slawomir Piatek, Ph.D., Hamamatsu Corporation and New Jersey Institute of Technology
December 11, 2019

About this webinar

Physics principles, design challenges, and new development

 

The idea of a self-driving car permeates our popular culture, creating an expectation that it soon will become an everyday reality. The automotive industry and academia are actively engaged in applied research developing systems needed to make cars fully autonomous. One such system is LiDAR: it is needed to provide high-definition 3D information of the car’s surroundings at the video rate and up to a distance of about 200 meters. A complete design of a functional LiDAR is proving to be elusive, with beam steering and photodetection presenting the greatest engineering challenge. This is a third webinar sponsored by Hamamatsu that explores technical aspects of automotive LiDAR. Its focus is a Solid State LiDAR - a specific design that does not contain any moving parts – with the following topics:

  • Review of time-of-flight (ToF) and frequency modulation continuous wave (FMCW) LiDAR concepts
  • Discussion of beam steering concepts
  • Discussion of challenges of today’s LiDAR systems
  • Discussion of future solid state LiDAR concepts

Visit www.hama-sipm.com (MPPCs (SiPMs)/MPPC arrays)

Visit www.hama-spad.com (Single-pixel photon counting modules)

About the presenter

Slawomir Piatek, Ph.D., is a senior university lecturer of physics at New Jersey Institute of Technology. In his role as scientific consultant at Hamamatsu Corporation, he has developed a photonics training program for engineers and is involved in popularizing SiPM as a novel photodetector by writing and lecturing about the device.