Project: Advancing time-of-flight technology for high performance light detectionand ranging

Acronym	LIANDRI (Reference Number: PS-2016_12)
Duration	01/04/2018 - 30/03/2021
Project Topic	Sensor technology plays a vital role in a wide range of applications,spanning from daily live appliances and sophisticated industrialenvironments to mission critical infrastructures. Photonics is known forenabling leaps in performance past that found in the state-of-the-art. Aprominent example is time-of-flight imaging: By illuminating targets withlight and acquiring the reflection thereof, a highly detailed 2Drepresentation of the scene as well as depth information can beobtained. This is highly attractive for 3D sensor applications concerningobject localisation, tracking and identification such as required forautomated manufacturing or self-driving automobiles. Purely electronicsaidedsolutions such as ultra-sonic detection or RADAR technologyexperience flaws since either range or resolution cannot be achieved.Besides, state-of-play cameras lack reliability under certain conditionssuch as frontlighting. All these flaws of conventional sensors leave roomfor misinterpretation in an environment where ultra-high reliability isparamount.LIANDRI aims at novel component technology for photonic sensingrelying on light-based detection and ranging (LIDAR) with high precisionand sensitivity. Time-of-flight photodetection enabled by CMOS-integrated 2D single-photon avalanche photodiodes in combination withGaN high-power optoelectronics for short-pulsed light generation in theGHz range will comprise the key elements for cost-effective direct imageacquisition for long ranges of up to 250m at high precision andreliability. Developed sensor test-chips will be evaluated under realisticenvironments for the representative applications of automotive LIDARand object tracking in confined manufacturing environments. Thepresence of innovative industrials along the value chain, in particular byAMS as component vendor of optoelectronics and Soft2Tec as systemdeveloper for 3D cameras, will ensure exploitable technology for latercommercialisation.
Network	PhotonicSensing
Call	Photonics based sensing

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH	Coordinator	Austria
2	University of Siegen	Partner	Germany
3	ams AG	Partner	Austria
4	soft2tec GmbH	Partner	Germany