Today’s LiDAR solutions are either too expensive or don’t meet the demanding performance requirements for automotive applications, which include long-range, wide field of view, high resolution and frame rate at aggressive cost, size, weight and power (C-SWAP) targets — all while meeting rigorous automotive reliability standards. This talk analyzes the underlying physics governing the behavior of LiDAR systems and derives important insights into the design imperatives required to deliver viable products for the automotive market. We will present these insights and demonstrate how Lumotive can build a high-performance, low-cost LiDAR system based on Liquid Crystal Metasurface technology that utilizes proven silicon manufacturing processes to enable a solid-state, reliable sensor.