Sensing technologies that detect a vehicle’s surrounding environment are essential for automated driving that enhance the safety and convenience of drivers. LiDAR has attracted attention as a key sensor that simultaneously enables ranging and object detection based on time of flight between light emitter and an object. Having mechanical moving parts, however, LiDAR systems present a variety of issues, including the need for miniaturization. We are therefore working on a phase control technology that applies an optical phased array to scan light beams while controlling the phase of the light radiated from an optical antenna, and that utilizes a Deep Neural Network to flexibly respond to the temperature of devices and other operating conditions. Electronic scanning technologies that eliminate the need for mechanical moving parts will further advance miniaturization and cost reductions and are therefore expected to expand the application of environmental sensing to factory logistics systems and a variety of other applications besides automated driving.
Beam scanning technology that uses Deep Neural Network-based phase control