Pointcloud Inc. and University of Southampton Publish Nature Paper on their Coherent 3D Imager

A Nature paper "A universal 3D imaging sensor on a silicon photonics platform" by Christopher Rogers, Alexander Y. Piggott, David J. Thomson, Robert F. Wiser, Ion E. Opris, Steven A. Fortune, Andrew J. Compston, Alexander Gondarenko, Fanfan Meng, Xia Chen, Graham T. Reed & Remus Nicolaescu from San Francisco-based Pointcloud Inc. and UK University of Southampton appears to be a minor version of their Arxiv.org paper published in August 2020.

Graham Reed, Professor of Silicon Photonics within the ORC said, “LIDAR has been promising a lot but has not always delivered on its potential in recent years because, although experts have recognised that integrated versions can scale down costs, the necessary performance has not been there. Until now.

The silicon photonics system we have developed provides much higher accuracy at distance compared to other chip-based LIDAR systems to date, and most mechanical versions, showing that the much sought-after integrated system for LIDAR is viable.”

Remus Nicolaescu, the CEO of Pointcloud Inc added, “The combination of high performance and low cost manufacturing, will accelerate existing applications in autonomy and augmented reality, as well as open new directions, such as industrial and consumer digital twin applications requiring high depth accuracy, or preventive healthcare through remote behavioural and vital signs monitoring requiring high velocity accuracy."

"Operating at the quantum noise limit, our system achieves an accuracy of 3.1 millimetres at a distance of 75 metres when using only 4 milliwatts of light, an order of magnitude more accurate than existing solid-state systems at such ranges. Future reductions of pixel size using state-of-the-art components could yield resolutions in excess of 20 megapixels for arrays the size of a consumer camera sensor."