You might already be familiar with the time-of-flight (ToF) sensors seen on many Android phones – these help them sense scene depth and mimic the bokeh effects of larger cameras.īut the LiDAR system used in the iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro 2020 – promises to go beyond this.
(Image credit: Apple) What's different about Apple's LiDAR scanner? But what's the difference between a time-of-flight sensor and the LiDAR 'scanner' that we'll mostly likely see on the iPhone 12? This obviously won't cut it on mobile devices, so newer LiDAR systems – including the 3D time-of-flight (ToF) sensors seen on many smartphones – are solid-state affairs with no moving parts. Until fairly recently, the most common types built 3D maps of their environments by physically sweeping around in a similar way to a radar dish. Of course, not all LiDAR systems are created equal. With the systems getting smaller, cheaper and more accurate, they've started become viable additions to mobile devices that already have things like powerful processors and GPS – tablets and phones. You might have also unwittingly come across the tech in one of the best robot vacuums.īut it's in the past couple of years that LiDAR's possibilities have really opened up. More recently, LiDAR (also known as lidar) has been seen on self-driving cars, where it helps detect objects like cyclists and pedestrians.
Like most futuristic tech, it started life as a military tool on planes, before becoming better known as the system that allowed the Apollo 15 mission to map the surface of the moon.
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