Super-dense point clouds acquired by an ultralight 10 g solid-state single photon LiDAR.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41461642.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-67346-8 and PMC identifier 12749077.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC-ND.
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Abstract
Integration of photogrammetry and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) algorithms has garnered attention to enhance visual fidelity and geometric accuracy in three-dimensional (3D) modeling. Here we show an ultralight 10 g solid-state single-photon LiDAR that minimizes photon cost per measurement. Achieving a maximum indoor distance of 25 m and a point cloud density of ~3.16 Mpps, the LiDAR provides geometric fidelity, while maintaining fine structure information challenging for conventional LiDAR. Key embedded components include a Q-switching semiconductor laser, which emits a 50-ps pulse-width tail-free laser using bandgap renormalization. A four-channel time-to-digital converter achieves a 3 ps timing jitter per channel and features real-time time-walk error correction for Poisson-distributed photon counts. A low-Q two-dimensional (2D) MEMS mirror with a 20 mm<sup>2</sup> mirror size and precisely controlled feedforward-driven frequency enables non-repetitive scanning and super-dense point cloud generation. We present 3D modeling using the colored point clouds and discuss its characteristics and challenges.