With the development of the automotive industry and LiDAR technology towards high precision and miniaturization, the application of precision optical components has gradually become crucial. Sun Optics can provide you with suitable optical component products.

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) 

LiDAR is one of the key sensors in autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). LiDAR creates 3D images by emitting a laser beam and receiving the reflected signal of the surrounding environment. LiDAR in beam collimation, beam scanning, beam focusing, beam splitting and other processes all rely on optical components.

From the perspective of the components of LiDAR, the most important component is the emitter. It requires a collimator to calibrate the light emitted by the laser, and through a beam splitter and a diffuser, convert the incident laser into a spot of uniform intensity of any shape and size.

The most common component in LiDAR is the mirror, such as when the optical path needs to be changed due to structural design, or when the length of the optical path is increased in a limited space to meet the requirements of the optical path design.

As the most external optical component of LiDAR, the window needs to have a certain active anti-interference capability. Secondly, harsh environments require these filters to be able to withstand a very wide temperature range (from -40 ℃ to + 80 ℃), especially in the environment that the car window faces. It may also be exposed to rain, ice, road de-icing salt and all other elemental environments that can be encountered while driving on the road. This requires that the window sheets be simultaneously coated with multiple film systems such as hydrophobic films, anti-reflection films, and defogging films to ensure performance stability in adverse weather conditions.

Filters are also indispensable in LiDAR. If the detector is the "eyes" of the LiDAR system, then the optical filter is the "sunglasses" - reducing glare and allowing the eyes to observe the sought target without background interference. Optical components are coated with anti-reflection and anti-reflection films or narrowband filters are added to achieve high transmission characteristics, reducing scattered light, ghostimages and backward reflections. Otherwise, significant light loss will occur during laser transmission, which will directly affect the final detection effect. Anti-reflection and anti-reflection coating is the most fundamental and commonly used coating technology in optical components. Anti-reflection films utilize the principle of light interference and achieve light reflection enhancement by controlling the thickness and refractive index of the film. Finally, LiDAR also requires lenses to reduce aberrations.

(The picture is from vcg.com)

Four-Wheel Aligner

Four-wheel alignment technology is widely applied in places such as auto repair shops, 4S stores and vehicle inspection institutions. For newly purchased vehicles, four-wheel alignment can help the vehicle achieve the best driving condition. For vehicles that have been driven for a period of time, four-wheel alignment can help detect and repair positioning parameter deviations caused by wear and deformation during driving, thereby ensuring the safety and stability of the vehicle.

The four-wheel alignment systems on the market mainly still rely on CCD optical sensors as their core technology. The CCD automotive four-wheel alignment instrument consists of four measurement probes in the data acquisition part. In practical applications, the eight CCD sensors on the four measurement probes are all equipped with filters in front of their lenses to eliminate the interference of visible light on the bright spot image of the infrared emitting diode.

(The picture is from vcg.com)

Sun Optics offers you high-performance optical components and customized optical design services to meet your unique requirements for lidar and four-wheel alignment systems in the automotive industry. 

Contact us to get a customized quotation just for you.

(the content refer to zhihu author Yvon shong)