Microvision Featured in EEJournal -- LIDAR

More and more is coming out about this. The price improvements claimed by Google are very interesting -- replacing a $75,000 unit by Velodyne with something costing a few hundred dollars.... 

EEJournal

Most recently, lidar has been embodied in slightly gawky units atop cars that just scream, “Something is different about this vehicle!” Using rotating mirrors, a beam can be steered 360° around the vehicle and up and down (to some extent) to map out everything that’s within range. But there’s some thought that, if we’re serious about letting the neighbors see us inside one of those, we need to improve the aesthetics.

This came up in a presentation by MicroVision at last fall’s MEMS Executive Congress. They have a MEMS mirror setup that we saw a couple of years ago as used in their pico-projector application. They use the same basic setup for heads-up displays and for lidar (which uses one extra ASIC); they adapt to the application by changing out the laser diodes and software.

Rather than rotating 360°, their MEMS mirror waves back and forth in a sinusoidal scan, controlled by a 27-Hz resonator; individual pixels are defined by turning the laser diode on and off. The faster the scan, the faster you can get an overview of what’s nearby. By slowing the scan, you get more detail. It sounds simple in principle, but they say that they have to battle jitter in the mirror and temperature effects on the laser. Control and compensation are the tough parts.

Check this out at TheVerge

Crazy Cool Tech CES Debut (multiple)

Microvision key in two of seven, benefits greatly from the fifth.

Not bad.


Fudzilla (T-mobile 5G Future)


INC - John Brandon  -- more at the source.

1. Drone and autonomous car fleets

Not giving anything away here, but there are rumblings about the need for automated cars and drones to operate in a fleet, connected to each other and part of a fleet control center. I'm aware of at least one company making an announcement about a drone fleet. (Amazon has already started delivering products by drone in the UK.)

3. Augmented reality that actually helps you

Augmented reality (AR) was more like a magic trick in the past. At CES 2017, I'm expecting to see AR that provides actual help in some way. AR is like an overlay on top of the real world. Microsoft HoloLens is a leader here, and I'm expecting to go hands-on. One example from 2016 of how this works is the Lenovo Phab 2 phone and the Lowe's app. You can use it to measure the space in a room and find out if a couch will fit.

7. 5G debuts

I already have a few meetings to test out 5G service, the next wave of cellular connectivity. I remember testing 4G at CES for the first time a few years ago. 5G promises consistent connections with more access points not just a speed boost.

The Market Does not know all

For a long time, people have been telling me that the market knows all, that there are no secrets and that if things were really going well, the market would know and the stock price would be higher.

I respectfully disagree and continue to compile the examples of that particular wrongness.

Microvision will follow suit, because it has the right technology, for multiple emerging markets: Bigger screens for mobile devices; Augmented Reality displays, and 3D Sensing.