40 Various laser technologies are competing fiercely to reduce the size, weight and cost of sensors for uncrewed systems. Lidar ranging systems are a key technology for long-range sensing for driverless vehicles and autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs), and they are making their way into uncrewed air system and underwater designs. From miniaturising micro-machined mirror systems to reconfigurable metasurface materials and solid-state flash laser diode architectures, there are many ways for the companies around the world to implement these technologies. Many are aimed at mapping and surveying applications, often as a separate payload on a UAV to provide detailed data from the air. But integrating the Lidar technology into driverless vehicles, UAVs and underwater robots presents more challenges for reducing size, weight and power consumption, as well as the cost. For mobile applications, Lidar technology provides instant acquisition of long-range, highly accurate 3D information, enabling the detection of obstacles in complex environments. This is especially important to provide high levels of accuracy to identify the distance to an object, and its size from the time and angle of the reflected light bouncing back from a laser beam over a wide area. All of this is coming together with a new generation of silicon photonics technology that allows the integration of the optical components on a single chip, from the laser diodes to the optical processing array and optical sensors. This is helping to reduce the size and weight of Lidar designs with a pathway to high-volume production to reduce the cost. Lidar technology was used back in 1971 by NASA for a lunar Laser Ranging RetroReflector (LRRR) in Apollo 15 to map the moon’s surface, which later extended its use in the spacecraft bound for Mars and Mercury. Laser-based Lidar ranging systems are making the most of photonic technology for integration, says Nick Flaherty Light fantastic Solid-state integrated Lidar devices (Image courtesy of CEA-Leti) April/May 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology
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