Source: China News Service  15^th Sep 2025

Huazhong University of Science and Technology announced on the 14th that it has jointly developed a brand-new "dual-modal" lidar system with Tsinghua University and Beijing Information Science and Technology University, which will further enhance the three-dimensional perception capabilities of autonomous vehicles, robots, drones and other devices.

The relevant achievements were recently published in the international optical journal Light: Science & Applications.

Lidar, as the "eyes" of various new types of intelligent unmanned devices, has a crucial performance. Traditional lidars are mainly divided into scanning type and flash type. The former has high precision but is slow, while the latter is fast but has limited precision. How to combine the advantages of both has long been a research difficulty.

To solve this problem, teams from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and others have proposed a "dual-modal" lidar solution. It is reported that the core of this solution lies in a device called a "hybrid-cascaded translational metasurface", which is composed of two layers of specially designed nano-lenses. By changing the polarization state of the incident laser, the system can freely switch between high-precision scanning mode and flash mode. In scanning mode, the system can precisely capture the details of distant targets; while in flash mode, it can uniformly illuminate the entire field of view at once and complete 3D imaging instantly.

At present, the team has successfully built a prototype of a "dual-mode" lidar system based on this device. With the further maturation of the technology, this efficient, flexible and compact "dual-mode" lidar is expected to play a significant role in the future in areas such as autonomous driving vehicles, intelligent robots, and high-end mapping, further enhancing the ability of machines to see far, see clearly and see fast.

Zhang Lingyun, the first author of the paper and an assistant researcher at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, said that this achievement is conducive to enhancing the scene applicability of LiDAR 3D perception technology. The next-generation intelligent micro-opto-mechatronic systems built based on related technologies are expected to become an important path for improving the sensing capabilities of new intelligent platforms such as autonomous vehicles, robots, and unmanned aerial vehicles.