Moving parts and economy of scale. If you want to buy an industrial 1D LIDAR off the shelf today, you're looking at a few thousand dollars. A galvanometer scann

Moving parts and economy of scale. If you want to buy an industrial 1D LIDAR off the shelf today, you're looking at a few thousand dollars. A galvanometer scanner like these guys use is again, several thousand dollars (just look at Thorlabs for a basic system). InGaS array sensors are also not cheap. Frankly I'm skeptical that a galvo based system will last long in the real world. In principle, flash LIDAR solves all of the problems. You can image an area at long distance in real-time. It has no moving parts and it's presumably amenable to MEMS production. Basic (non-MEMS) units from people like ASC cost tens of thousands. We just need someone with a serious bankroll to develop one. We saw exactly the same with Time of Flight cameras. Microsoft bought Canesta and suddenly a $5k+ camera cost $100.