SBIR Phase I: Micro-Fluidic LiDAR for Autonomous Vehicles

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to hasten the deployment of autonomous transportation systems, which stand to reduce driving accidents and fatalities, enable new paradigms in urban design, reduce vehicle traffic, increase automobile efficiency, and improve air quality, benefiting the immediate health of drivers and non-drivers alike. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are simpler implantations of semi-autonomous controls systems, but are already saving lives by providing intelligent cruise control, lane departure warnings, steering assistance, and preemptive emergency braking. As ADAS improves through advanced sensor hardware developed in this work and becomes more widely deployed, more accident will be avoided and lives saved. Autonomous vehicles are expected to accelerate current trends from private ownership of multiple vehicles to transportation services, such as Uber and Lyft, and autonomous vehicle services, a trend evident in New York city and San Francisco, where parking lot capacity is dropping. As carpool lanes have promoted wiser commuting and reduced congestion, future autonomous lanes can enable platooning, where vehicles travel at reduced distances between each other at high speed, reducing drag, increasing fuel economy, and better utilizing public infrastructure. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will result in a vision system that delivers three dimensional data of objects in view, allowing for the widespread adoption of delivery robots, drones, advanced driver safety systems in vehicles, and autonomous vehicles. To deliver performance and reliability at a cost that enabled wide adoption, the company will address the challenges facing incumbent technologies with two key technological innovations: A high speed, wide angle laser beam steering technology based on magneto-hydro-dynamics, and the use of neutrally buoyant optomechanics. These two innovations allow for light beams to be swept across a wide field of view, delivering 3D point cloud data at high frame rate with operational immunity to vibrations from road hazards such as pot holes and speed bumps. The end objective of the research is to demonstrate a fully functionally imaging system operating with components developed in this work. It is anticipated that the developed components will implement precise spatial control of laser sources by a low cost electromagnetic drive motor, demonstrating performance metrics consistent with deployment on production vehicles.