Mechanical vs hybrid-solid-state LiDAR - how to choose?
Selection Q&A Updated
Mechanical units (like the RS-LiDAR-16) sweep 360 degrees with uniform point clouds - good for research and low-speed vehicles. Hybrid-solid-state units (Mid-360 class) drop the large spinning assembly for better lifetime and cost - the mainstream for mobile robots.
Mechanical LiDARs spin the whole unit for uniform 360-degree clouds that algorithms digest easily, at the cost of lifetime, bulk and price. Hybrid-solid-state designs replace the big rotation with small mirrors/prisms - compact, long-lived, cheaper - with different cloud patterns (Livox's non-repetitive scan) that mainstream SLAM frameworks already support.
Rule of thumb: pick mechanical for teaching and algorithms expecting standard 16/32-beam clouds; pick hybrid-solid-state for production robots and unattended inspection. KIES stocks both and can recommend by your software stack.