How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works

Re:How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works by Kelbit on Tuesday October 24, 2017 @02:41PM (#15544094)

You can get some pretty impressive dynamic range out of the new silicon photomultiplier detectors that companies like SensL, Hamamatsu, and Ketek have been putting out.

Despite the name, they aren't related to old-school photomultipliers - they're basically large arrays of very tiny Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes on a single chip. This solves the low dynamic range issues from traditional large-area avalanche photodiodes. Traditional APDs have a long recovery time, whereas an array of small APDs has both a shorter recovery time per cell as well as a greater overall dynamic range due to the ability of multiple cells to be struck at once by incident photons.

SensL actually has a bunch of videos of their products in use for a LIDAR application: http://sensl.com/applications/lidar1/

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Re:How the LIDAR tech GM just bought probably works by Animats on Tuesday October 24, 2017 @07:10PM (#15546000)

Advanced Scientific Concepts built some actual photomultiplier LIDAR devices for DoD. Photomultipliers have very low latency - picoseconds. One photon in, one electron out. So they built an InGaAs sensor as the target of a photomultiplier tube. Sensitivity is very good, but the technology is expensive.

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