In the near future, autonomous vehicles will use laser beam-based steering systems, which will be faster than current radio wave-based systems. The laser pointer technology has better performance and higher efficiency than the existing accident avoidance system technology.
According to a report released by Purdue University, as researchers now say, laser beam control is much faster than any automatic steering system using phased antenna-array technology. This steering system is based on the interaction between a pulsed laser and a silicon-based surface. The pulsed laser is generated by a “mode-locked laser with a frequency comb spectrum.”
The laser beam-based steering device can scan at a large angle in nanosecond or picosecond time, but the prior art requires microsecond time to complete it. “Compared with existing technologies, this technology has greatly reduced complexity and lower power consumption,” said Amr Shaltout, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University’s School of Materials Science and Engineering. Laser pointer technology: nano optics (behavior of light at the nano level) metasurfaces (surfaces that can manipulate light) and ultrafast optics. “