US Patent Issued to Waymo on Jan. 28 for "Combined collimation and diffuser lens for flood illuminator" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 29 -- United States Patent no. 12,210,171, issued on Jan. 28, was assigned to Waymo LLC (Mountain View, Calif.).

"Combined collimation and diffuser lens for flood illuminator" was invented by Michael Brickner (Mountain View, Calif.), Hui Son (Hayward, Calif.), Chandra Kakani (Fremont, Calif.) and Erin Eppard (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present disclosure relates to optical systems and vehicles, which may incorporate lidar sensors. An example optical system includes a light-emitter device configured to emit emission light. The optical system also includes an optical element including a first surface and an opposing second surface. The first surfa...