Sony Unveils the Smallest and Lightest Lidar Depth Sensor

Sony Unveils the Smallest and Lightest Lidar Depth Sensor(petapixel.com)

65 points by sksxihve 1 year ago | 19 comments

thot_experiment 1 year ago |

A very meandering article, here's the info you want:

~30deg fov 24x24 resolution 940nm IR

50g, approx 3cm^3

max range in 15fps mode @ center of fov, 50% albedo

outdoor 20m indoor 40m

30fps default mode (range expectations not stated for this mode)

5mm accuracy @ 10m (unclear in which mode)

no word on price

first party info: https://pro.sony/ue_US/products/lidar/as-dt1

teleforce 1 year ago | |

I've posted the news a few days back with more info but better to go to Sony website for more details [1].

[1] Sony AS-DT1: Smallest and Lightest Precision Lidar Sensor

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43670572

tecleandor 1 year ago | |

The size confused me a lot. You have a typo there, It's ~27cm^3 (or ~3^3cm^3 if you want) and not 3cm^3.

I was thinking.. Now THAT'S small. :)

wan23 1 year ago | | |

29 by 29 by 31 millimeters from the article - that's about 3cm^3

MrLeap 1 year ago | |

It's a cute package, but that resolution is wild. 24x24? I suppose it might have a place in manufacturing automation tasks.

I don't know where you'd have room for one of these but no room for something like the D435 which has a resolution of 1280 × 720 on the depth side and an RGB sensor. Maybe robotic vacuum cleaners or something.

thot_experiment 1 year ago | | |

These are fundamentally different technologies, the camera you linked uses structured light and stereo vision + ML to get depth. It has an order of magnitude less range and an order of magnitude more error. The Sony sensor is time of flight SPAD, it's much closer to giving you a ground truth you can trust than the Intel camera and much more capable of rejecting environmental noise.

sitkack 1 year ago | | |

It is like a fancy occupancy sensor, 24x24 over that huge volume and only 15fps.

pzo 1 year ago | | |

This is still useful if you combine this method with other methods to make depth map more dense and metric e.g. photogrammetry or ML depth estimation model. AFAIK this is how apple depth api works with their lidar.

Here bytedance release very good model that combine their depth anything v2 with such low density apple lidar depth map: https://promptda.github.io/

Animats 1 year ago |

There are already LIDAR units for drones about that size.[1] About the same weight, better resolution, available now. There are smaller phone time of flight cameras, with better resolution.

Really needs price info. There's good expensive stuff, and not very good cheap stuff, in this space.

[1] https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/l/lightware-lid...

tecleandor 1 year ago | |

There's a big difference on accuracy, though. The one you posted has 10cm of accuracy, and the one announced has 5mm.

Also 360 vs 30 degrees of fov.

I think it's for a completely different market (although I'm not sure which one...)

apercu 1 year ago | |

That's the application I was thinking of - imagine being at a (small) archeological dig site and being able to fly a drone with lidar over your dig.

solardev 1 year ago |

Wait, haven't iPhones and iPads had lidars for several years now? Aren't they much smaller?

https://www.ifixit.com/products/iphone-13-pro-lidar-sensor

This Sony one looks huge in comparison. Am I missing some fundamental difference between them?

moralestapia 1 year ago | |

My guess would be that's not "true" LIDAR. It's probably something akin to the Kinect hardware; an infrared pattern is projected, then distance is inferred depending on how it gets distorted, while LIDAR sends photons and measures them back (technically the first does that as well but w/e).

Animats 1 year ago | | |

There have been Kinect sensors with true time of flight. The first Kinect used triangulation, but Microsoft switched to time-of-flight for later models.[1]

There are several ways to do this. At short ranges, they all work. Then it gets hard, because not much energy is coming back.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.05459

solardev 1 year ago | | |

I don't think Apple would outright mislabel it if it were some other kind of depth sensor. iPhones do also combine data from the visible light cameras to aid in depth mapping, but the lidar sensor is a separate emitter and receiver.

As far as I can tell, it's true lidar?

Technical analysis: https://4da.tech/?p=582

Being used for science: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-01763-9

solardev 1 year ago |

The title is misleading. There are smaller similar sensors. From the actual PR:

> Sony Electronics Announces the World's Smallest and Lightest[1]

> [1] As a 3D LiDAR with a measurement range of 10m or more under sunny outdoor conditions (excluding modules), according to Sony research, as of April 2025

So the smallest within those constraints, not overall. The iPhone ones are smaller. (And I think they also use Sony receivers?)

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sony-electronics-an...