Super-dense point clouds acquired by an ultralight 10 g solid-state single photon LiDAR

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 mm2 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. Single-shot ranging enabled by single-photon detection allows dense point clouds to be acquired with greatly reduced laser pulse energy, while enhancing geometrical fidelity through the improved temporal resolution of devices in an ultralight LiDAR.