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Ouster's new digital Lidar – 128 beams, ultra-wide view

ouster.com

21–30 of 122 posts

Re: Ouster's new digital Lidar – 128 beams, ultra-wide view

#21

Anyone have a LIDAR (or similar) product suggestion? I'm getting ready to start a hobby project that involves scanning the interior surfaces of a house. Ideally the accuracy would be at least 1/16" (1.5mm), including any scan-stitching required because the sensor had to be moved around. I've seen a few promising products, but none stands out as a perfect match.

A project I wanted to play with 10 years ago, and didn't have time or money, was a tool you could set in a room, and it would put laser 'dots' along the ceiling where crews should hang the parts for a drop ceiling, to minimize cuts of both hanger equipment, and the ceiling tiles.

Re: Ouster's new digital Lidar – 128 beams, ultra-wide view

#22

Anyone have a LIDAR (or similar) product suggestion? I'm getting ready to start a hobby project that involves scanning the interior surfaces of a house. Ideally the accuracy would be at least 1/16" (1.5mm), including any scan-stitching required because the sensor had to be moved around. I've seen a few promising products, but none stands out as a perfect match.

1,5 mm accuracy isn’t doable that easily. There is company called Photoneo having structured light system with such advertised accuracy. But the scan volume is rather limited.

Working on time-of-flight Stereo camera in my spare time. Few centimeter error is very normal. It was shocking at the beginning, but I now understand why bin picking is still hard task.

Re: Ouster's new digital Lidar – 128 beams, ultra-wide view

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is a ~80% discount on other 128 beam sensors, it's unfortunately still out of reach for the hacker community. We absolutely plan to get prices down to an affordable level for individuals in well under 5 years! Also, Ouster runs a sponsorship program that gives deeply discounted or free sensors to cool projects. If you have a cool idea, shoot me an email: derek.frome at ouster dot io

How can one apply for a “cool project”?

Email derek.frome at ouster dot io. I'd love to learn about your project!

Re: Ouster's new digital Lidar – 128 beams, ultra-wide view

#24
post #4

I wonder how well this works if 20 such devices shine on the same object.

That's sort of like asking how well cameras would work if 20 of them were looking at the same object. Lidar sensors can interfere with each other, and a certain industry-standard company is famous for having terrible problems with this issue, but there are engineering solutions to this problem. FMCW is a popular choice, and gives the benefit of providing instantaneous velocity readings. Of course, due to the Heisenbe…

> Of course, due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, this means you also get worse distance estimation.

This isn't how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle works. For macroscopic objects, the effects are completely dwarfed by other phenomenon. Keep in mind that Planck's constant is 10^{-33} meters.

Re: Ouster's new digital Lidar – 128 beams, ultra-wide view

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sort of like asking how well cameras would work if 20 of them were looking at the same object. Lidar sensors can interfere with each other, and a certain industry-standard company is famous for having terrible problems with this issue, but there are engineering solutions to this problem. FMCW is a popular choice, and gives the benefit of providing instantaneous velocity readings. Of course, due to the Heisenbe…

> Of course, due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, this means you also get worse distance estimation. This isn't how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle works. For macroscopic objects, the effects are completely dwarfed by other phenomenon. Keep in mind that Planck's constant is 10^{-33} meters.

I was actually wondering about this the other day. So what equation(s) would you use to determine the variance in distance estimation relative to velocity estimation? And it sounds like you're strongly implying the distance variation is immeasurably small while accurately estimating velocity - is this correct? I'm not sure the macro point makes sense, since you could have a large object with only one point measuring it (or more realistically a dozen points, but still far from what people mean when they say macro). But I'm curious to learn more if you can provide the math.

Re: Ouster's new digital Lidar – 128 beams, ultra-wide view

#27
post #3

> The OS0 lidar sensor: an ultra-wide field of view sensor with 128 lines of resolution > The OS2 lidar sensor: a long-range sensor with up to 128 lines of resolution > Two new 32 channel sensors: both an OS0 and OS2 version > Price: Starts at $16,000 with volume discounts available I would LOVE to get my hands on this tech. Maybe in 5-10 years when the price comes down to commodity level for hackers to play around w…

Not sure if this fits your project but Intel's new Real Sense Lidar seems pretty cool. Meant for more indoor application though: https://www.intelrealsense.com/lidar-camera-l515/

Re: Ouster's new digital Lidar – 128 beams, ultra-wide view

#28
post #3

> The OS0 lidar sensor: an ultra-wide field of view sensor with 128 lines of resolution > The OS2 lidar sensor: a long-range sensor with up to 128 lines of resolution > Two new 32 channel sensors: both an OS0 and OS2 version > Price: Starts at $16,000 with volume discounts available I would LOVE to get my hands on this tech. Maybe in 5-10 years when the price comes down to commodity level for hackers to play around w…

While this is a ~80% discount on other 128 beam sensors, it's unfortunately still out of reach for the hacker community. We absolutely plan to get prices down to an affordable level for individuals in well under 5 years! Also, Ouster runs a sponsorship program that gives deeply discounted or free sensors to cool projects. If you have a cool idea, shoot me an email: derek.frome at ouster dot io

Might be interesting to add the Ouster sensor to our sensor simulation [1] to give people the ability to play around with the data even if it's outside the price range?

[1] blensor.org

Re: Ouster's new digital Lidar – 128 beams, ultra-wide view

#29
post #17

How many moving parts does this have? What's the difference between solid state lidar, and "digital lidar"? I understand that there are 0 moving parts with solid state lidar.

This has a single moving part - a brushless motor that turns the turntable. It's rated for over 100,000 continuous hours of operation, and passes automotive shock and vibration standards.

There's a good explanation in the post about what we mean by digital lidar, but the tl;dr version is we use silicon CMOS chips for lasers and detectors vs analog components like side emitting lasers and APDs used by legacy lidar providers.

Solid state is a bit of a buzzword, and most "solid state" lidar sensors actually have small, delicate moving parts inside. Solid state sensors are aimed primarily at consumer vehicles, which are still many years away.

The benefit is (at least in theory) easier integration into the vehicle fascia and (again, in theory) higher reliability vs legacy spinning lidar, which are quite unreliable in the real world.

Ouster's digital lidar sensors are much more reliable than the legacy analog spinning lidar sensors, and much more compact - and therefore easier to integrate.

Re: Ouster's new digital Lidar – 128 beams, ultra-wide view

#30

Anyone have a LIDAR (or similar) product suggestion? I'm getting ready to start a hobby project that involves scanning the interior surfaces of a house. Ideally the accuracy would be at least 1/16" (1.5mm), including any scan-stitching required because the sensor had to be moved around. I've seen a few promising products, but none stands out as a perfect match.

mm wave radar + sar postprocessing? Given you have a 100% static scene, it should work great
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