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.
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.
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/
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.
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).
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.
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.
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?)
Readit News
~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
[1] Sony AS-DT1: Smallest and Lightest Precision Lidar Sensor
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43670572
I was thinking.. Now THAT'S small. :)
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.
Here bytedance release very good model that combine their depth anything v2 with such low density apple lidar depth map: https://promptda.github.io/
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...
Also 360 vs 30 degrees of fov.
I think it's for a completely different market (although I'm not sure which one...)
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?
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
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
> 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...