Does AF use LIDAR nowadays?
The biggest advantage compared to older SLR designs are that Phase Detection can now work with full light (vs whatever got split off on an SLR pentaprism for the dedicated AF sensor) and can work in conjunction with the contrast Detection for fine tuning focus.
Then, of course, all the predictive stuff added in the last 10ish years as far as processing sensor output to detect eyes/birds/motion/etc.
I suspect it's fairly challenging to implement since the LIDAR sensor doesn't operate through the lens, so you'd have to continuously align the depth map with the image to account for parallax; plus it's only useful for close-ish distances (since the lasers can't be too powerful) and can cause unwanted focus behavior with windows or reflections.
It's a LiDAR that follows a subject and gets distance measurements, and then sends them to an additional accessory which is typically used to control focus in cinema cameras. That second accessory has a motor and is attached to a cinema lens that has certain threading or grooves where the accessory can grip and change the focus.
In cinema, the camera operator (usually) only moves the camera, but not the focus. For that, there's a 'focus puller'. A person who finely operates the focus, sometimes at a certain distance, using some sort of specialized control.