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Animats
I was expecting flash LIDAR and MEMS mirror systems to dominate self-driving cars by now, but rotating machinery is still dominant in the US.

The trend in China and Japan is a long-range forward-facing LIDAR coupled with three shorter-range units for side and rear coverage.[1] The long-range unit still costs around US$10,000. This should come down with volume.

[1] https://www.robosense.ai/en/news-show-1908

[2] https://openelab.io/products/robosense-em4-thousand-beam-lon...

fooblaster
The em4 does not cost 10000 dollars. It is going to sell for well under 1000$. Hesai's low end ATX is supposed going to be less than 300$, and the AT128 already sells for 400-500$.
moffkalast
The first table is already outdated, there are COTS units like the STL-27L that operate on dTOF with a 25m range, return thousands of points per sweep, and fit into a package with a footprint the size of a typical wristwatch. Bulky optics are no longer a requirement, and that's even on the very low end of the price spectrum, more expensive units can do 30+ m in a similarly sized form factor.
NewsaHackO
Very informative. I assume this is the type of industry work PhDs in physics do
mahirsaid
There is still so much to be done with LIdar. I myself am so intrigued of the output these devices present. The data and capabilities that are possible with this tech is amazing to me. Terrain scanning to autonomous vehicles the list goes on. Lasers are amazing breakthrough for mankind and breakthrough for the physics that involved, light that can be manipulated to seek alternative outcomes of data or real-world applications.
sega_sai
I was always wondering if every car around you had a Lidar, would these systems be confused by light emitted by other cars ?
viggity
In general, no. And to be clear, this is my general understanding and I don't have the time to look up the specifics, but I'm pretty sure lidar uses a "carrier wave" in much the same way old telephone modems did, or your IR remote for your TV. The carrier wave is how these sensors don't get confused. If you've ever been in traffic, and you get a stray, one off "YOURE TOO CLOSE TO SOMETHING" when you in fact aren't, it is because a carrier wave from another car happens to line up and you have a collision (pun intended).

two seconds of googling: https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/tutorials/2021/understandin...

amelius
Slightly offtopic, why is it so difficult to find a cheap and compact laser interferometer that can do sub-micron measurements?

This guy gets close:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUdro-6u2Zg&t=770s

But why isn't something cheap and small like this commercially available as an integrated system?