SBIR Phase II: Focal Plane Array for Active Coherent Imaging

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发技术，使三维（3D）光探测和测距（激光雷达）系统能够在更小、更经济的无人机上用于测绘、测量和导航。3D激光雷达在环境管理、林业、土地和走廊测绘、建筑、土地测量、精准农业、电力线和基础设施检查以及无数其他领域都有重要应用。该技术将通过降低高性能激光雷达系统和可携带该系统的无人机的拥有成本，为行业带来重大的经济影响。无人机激光雷达应用的入门成本降低，将有利于小型企业在测绘和测量领域开展小规模项目。除了基于无人机的应用，这项创新还将显著降低成本，并在自动驾驶汽车和其他工业应用（包括机器人、智慧城市基础设施、监控和安全）以及消费者应用（如增强现实的3D传感）中提供3D激光雷达传感的无缝集成。该项目带来的众多应用将不仅有助于提高美国的经济竞争力，还将改善生活质量、安保和安全。该项目旨在开发一种高性能、紧凑、轻质的3D激光雷达传感器，以满足基于无人机的高精度激光雷达应用日益增长的需求。目前商用高性能无人机激光雷达系统因其高成本、体积大、重量重和高功耗而臭名昭著。目前的无人机激光雷达系统也容易出现机械损伤。这些问题不可避免地缩短了无人机的飞行时间，限制了在更常见的消费级小型无人机上安装高性能激光雷达系统，并增加了运营成本。提出的激光雷达传感器将通过利用创新设计中的硅光子技术的高性能相干激光雷达检测方法来缓解所有这些问题。相干激光雷达探测方法允许比大多数现有激光雷达系统中使用的方法更敏感的测量。在相同的激光功率下，该技术实现了更长的探测范围和更大的回波次数。基于高度可扩展的互补金属氧化物半导体（CMOS）兼容硅光子技术，激光雷达传感器能够以紧凑的尺寸实现高空间分辨率。整个系统的外形类似于手掌大小的小型相机，通常用于小型无人机的摄影测量。该解决方案不需要进行光束扫描的机械机构，也不需要对光学元件进行高精度校准，使系统具有耐用、紧凑、轻便和节能的特点。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is in developing technology that will enable the use of a 3-dimensional (3D) light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system in smaller and more economical drones for mapping, surveying, and navigation. The 3D LiDAR has important applications in environment management, forestry, land and corridor mapping, construction, land surveying, precision agriculture, powerline and infrastructure inspection, and countless other areas. The technology will bring significant economic impacts to the industries by reducing the ownership costs of a high-performance LiDAR system and the drone that can carry this system. The reduction of the entry-cost for LiDAR applications with drones will in turn benefit small businesses to perform smaller-scale projects in mapping and surveying. Other than drone-based applications, the innovation is poised to significantly reduce the costs and provide seamless integration of 3D LiDAR sensing in self-driving vehicles and other industrial applications including robotics, smart city infrastructure, surveillance, and security, as well as consumer applications like 3D sensing for augmented reality. The numerous applications enabled by the proposed project not will only help increase the economic competitiveness of the U.S. but also improve quality of life, security and safety.The proposed project aims at developing a high-performance, compact, and light-weight 3D LiDAR sensor to meet the increasing needs of drone-based, high-precision LiDAR applications. Current commercial high-performance drone-LiDAR systems are notorious for their high cost, bulkiness, heavy weight, and high power-consumption. Current drone-LiDAR systems are also prone to mechanical damage. These issues inevitably shorten the drone flight time, inhibit the installations of high-performance LiDAR systems on the more common consumer-grade small drones, and increase the operation costs. The proposed LiDAR sensor will mitigate all of these issues by leveraging a high-performance coherent LiDAR detection approach with silicon photonics technology in an innovative design. The coherent LiDAR detection method allows more sensitive measurements than the method used in most existing LiDAR systems. The technology achieves a longer detection range and larger number of returns given the same laser power. Based on highly scalable Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible silicon photonics technology, the LiDAR sensor is able to achieve high spatial resolution in a compact size. The entire system will have a form-factor similar to a palm-sized compact camera commonly used for photogrammetry in small drones. The solution requires no mechanical mechanisms for beam scanning nor high-precision alignment of optical components, making the system inherently durable, compact, lightweight, and power efficient.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.