According to foreign media reports, researchers at Purdue University and Stanford University have developed a laser sensing technology. It is said that compared with the current laser pointer sensing technology, the new technology is more powerful, more reliable, and cheaper. In the future, this technology may be applied to autonomous vehicles.
It is said that two universities are testing and using laser beam control, which is based on the interaction of light and matter between silicon-based metasurfaces and short light pulses generated by mode-locked lasers with optical frequency comb spectra. This type of beam control device can scan a large field of view and it only takes a few nanoseconds or picoseconds. In comparison, current technology takes several microseconds.
Laser beam control devices can be used in navigation, aerospace, radar applications, imaging, tag scanners, robotics, archeology, mapping, and atmospheric physics. The increase in laser scanning speed is directly related to the improvement of frame rate and image resolution. Researchers claim that this is a chip-compatible technology that requires no other energy source. In addition, another key element of this innovative technology is the metasurface coated with a patterned silicon film.
Researchers claim that another core element of technological progress is the application of photonic metasurfaces. This super surface provides a simple, compact and energy-efficient product solution for photonic design. Combining the two technologies above provides a simpler solution. After adopting the new system of the research team, the transmission frequency of each structural part is slightly different, which means that in the entire process, there is no need to continuously adjust the position of each antenna and there is no energy consumption.
The challenge facing researchers today is how to scale up the implementation of this innovative technology. The R & D team is looking for investors, partners and license agreements that the technology may require. In the early days of technology development, the application of this technology was scanning equipment in shops, airports or other fields. In the future, the technology will shift to self-driving cars, and technical cooperation will be carried out with manufacturers of automotive pointer laser pointers.