# MIT's New Lidar Chip Steers Light With No Moving Parts, Widening the View for Self-Driving Cars

*2026-07-24 10:01 UTC · Technology · 1 min read*

> MIT researchers built a moving-parts-free lidar chip that widens the field of view while cutting antenna interference from 100% to about 1%, a step toward cheaper, more durable sensors for self-driving cars.

MIT engineers led by Professor Jelena Notaros built a silicon-photonics chip that solves a long-standing flaw in solid-state lidar: when antennas on these chips are packed close together for a wider field of view, their optical signals leak into each other and blur the beam.

The team's fix uses a repeating set of three antennas, each with a distinctly shaped width and corrugation pattern, giving every antenna its own propagation coefficient. That stops neighboring antennas from coupling with each other while still letting the array steer a single precise beam purely by adjusting the phase of light, with no mechanical parts. In tests, the design cut interference between antennas from roughly 100% down to about 1%, while scanning a much broader field of view than earlier chip-based designs.

Because the chip has no moving parts, it points toward lidar sensors that are smaller, cheaper and more durable than today's spinning units — useful for autonomous vehicles, aerial surveying and construction-site monitoring, where a wide, reliable field of view matters most.

## Sources

- [news.mit.edu](https://news.mit.edu/2026/photonics-advance-could-enable-compact-high-performance-lidar-sensors-0507)
- [sciencedaily.com](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260722032127.htm)

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TechTools News · https://techtools.cz/tools/news/article/2063-mit-s-new-lidar-chip-steers-light-with-no-moving-parts-widening-the-view-for
Česká verze: https://techtools.cz/tools/news/clanek/2136-novy-cip-pro-lidar-z-mit-ridi-svetlo-bez-pohyblivych-casti-a-rozsiruje-zorne