The concern isn't China dominating the area of $20 toys. The concern is platforms relevant to industry and military.
Whether that, in turn, can be disentangled from "the area of $20 toys" in case of drones is unclear to me.
Is Neo a $20 toy? LIDARs are getting cheap quick, at some point when ToF sensors add $10 to BoM they will be in all drones.. I guess except US only SKUs? Not like you can't get pretty much the same data using just a single camera, GPS+IMU fusion and structure-from-motion..
FCC proposal doesn’t distinguish that safety sensor from mapping-grade or military LiDAR - it covers any drone that “contains or integrates” LiDAR.
If Air and Mini ain't hobbyist grade idk what is.