Mems Journal Article

A good article in Mems Journal, featuring Microvision's Hokanen.

The best summary of why PicoP is superior is in the highlighted paragraph.

Thanks for the heads-up, Joe.

Mems Journal -- there is a lot more at the source.

Jari Honkanen: Our HUD technology architecture consists of red, green, and blue laser diodes, each with a lens near the laser output that collects the light from the laser. The light from the three lasers is combined with basics optics into a single beam. The intensity of each laser light source is varied to create a complete palette of colors and shades. The beam is then relayed onto a biaxial MEMS scanning mirror that scans the beam in a raster pattern. The projected image is created by modulating the three lasers synchronously with the position of the scanned beam. In the HUD application, specialized relay optics direct the beam of light from the scanning engine, making a virtual image viewable within the driver’s forward-looking field of view.

The main differences between MEMS laser beam scanning HUD, and HUDs based on panel displays: are 1) laser light sources produce brilliant colors and a wide color gamut, which helps the HUD see-through information stand out from background scenes, 2) MEMS LBS HUDs are high-contrast, meaning the lasers are completely off for pixels in the off state. This produces the best see-through display with no background glow, 3) the lasers are directly modulated pixel-by-pixel so light is only produced when needed. For panel-based displays, light sources are always on, even for black pixels, which makes them less power efficient, 4) panel based displays require more complex optical designs, which increases size and can reduce reliability, and 5) laser light, due to its coherence and polarization, is collected and relayed through the optical system with lower losses.

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Competing LIDAR technologies are mechanical scanning LIDAR, non-scanning flash LIDAR, and phase array LIDAR.

When it comes to performance, we believe that our MEMS Scanning LIDAR offers significant benefits, including small size (a thin scanning engine at 6mm width enables new class of form factors), high resolution (we have prototypes that are capturing 5.5M points per second), dynamic (MEMS scanning allows programmable resolution and frame rate. The same sensor can perform either very fast lower resolution scan or slower high resolution scan, depending on the application and driving situation), and low persistence (scanned laser system enables blur-free capture of moving objects).