Found this while searching, not a word for word similarity but it raises some thoughts.

Autonomous car:

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/electronics/news/laser-sensing-system-improves-safety-for-autonomous-vehicles/1018661.article

"To avoid the drawbacks of size, power and cost, the Berkeley team exploited MEMS tuneable VCSELs. MEMS (micro-electrical-mechanical system) helped to change the frequency of the laser light for the chirping, while VCSELs (vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers) are a type of inexpensive integrable semiconductor lasers with low power consumption. By using the MEMS device at its resonance the researchers were able to amplify the system’s signal without a great expense of power."

Poet has something similar

" The technology also provides a number of key, integrable opto-electronic devices: resonant vertical cavity lasers, detectors, amplifiers and modulators for out-of-plane operation. In addition, a novel innovation enables in-plane waveguide and traveling wave operation for lasers, detectors, modulators, amplifiers and directional coupler switches. Important to the military is POET’s potential to integrate digital, radio frequency and optical technologies in a single device, which is designed to satisfy the documented high-performance capability needs for multiple space systems of all military departments and agency technology areas."

http://agoracom.com/ir/POETTechnologies/forums/discussion/topics/599530-we-are-getting-closer-to-autonomous-cars/?message_id=1880821

Definition of Verticle Cavity Laser:

The vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser, or VCSEL /ˈvɪksəl/, is a type of semiconductor laser diode with laser beam emission perpendicular from the top surface, contrary to conventional edge-emitting semiconductor lasers (also in-plane lasers) which emit from surfaces formed by cleaving the individual chip out of a wafer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical-cavity_surface-emitting_laser

I really like the sound of this one below, rings a bit of a bell to me.

Optical and electrical investigations of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL) with a monolithically integrated electro-optical modulator (EOM) allow for a detailed physical understanding of this complex compound cavity laser system. The EOM VCSEL light output is investigated to identify optimal working points. An electro-optic resonance feature triggered by the quantum confined Stark effect is used to modulate individual VCSEL modes by more than 20 dB with an extremely small EOM voltage change of less than 100 mV. Spectral mode analysis reveals modulation of higher order modes and very low wavelength chirp of < 0.5 nm. Dynamic experiments and simulation predict an intrinsic bandwidth of the EOM VCSEL exceeding 50 GHz.

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/221895990_Electro-optical_resonance_modulation_of_vertical-cavity_surface-emitting_lasers