Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors
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Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors
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Re: Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors
#2I was expecting flash LIDAR and MEMS mirror systems to dominate self-driving cars by now, but rotating machinery is still dominant in the US.
The trend in China and Japan is a long-range forward-facing LIDAR coupled with three shorter-range units for side and rear coverage.[1] The long-range unit still costs around US$10,000. This should come down with volume.
[1] https://www.robosense.ai/en/news-show-1908
[2] https://openelab.io/products/robosense-em4-thousand-beam-lon...
Re: Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors
#3I was expecting flash LIDAR and MEMS mirror systems to dominate self-driving cars by now, but rotating machinery is still dominant in the US. The trend in China and Japan is a long-range forward-facing LIDAR coupled with three shorter-range units for side and rear coverage.[1] The long-range unit still costs around US$10,000. This should come down with volume. [1] https://www.robosense.ai/en/news-show-1908 [2] https:…
Non-scanning means your flash emits the equivalent of all the beams at the same time. Look at their flagship spec, you must master 160A next to the other electronics. Two board designs are more expensive and error prone, can't get 160 amps through a flex-cable easily. Then there is the opening angle, you need wide _and_ long, at least for front and rear facing and the optics for that are challenging. Another influence certainly is that the automated driving craze has been superseded by the AI craze and scaling won't come in the time frame that was predicted some years ago. Disclaimer: worked in AD since 2012 (too late for the urban challenge unfortunately ;)) and in a company building sensors and a full stack.
P.S.: a QNX desktop is possible and actually alive again, but company politics... :/
Re: Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors
#4I was expecting flash LIDAR and MEMS mirror systems to dominate self-driving cars by now, but rotating machinery is still dominant in the US. The trend in China and Japan is a long-range forward-facing LIDAR coupled with three shorter-range units for side and rear coverage.[1] The long-range unit still costs around US$10,000. This should come down with volume. [1] https://www.robosense.ai/en/news-show-1908 [2] https:…
Non-scanning means your flash emits the equivalent of all the beams at the same time. Look at their flagship spec, you must master 160A next to the other electronics. Two board designs are more expensive and error prone, can't get 160 amps through a flex-cable easily. Then there is the opening angle, you need wide _and_ long, at least for front and rear facing and the optics for that are challenging. Another influenc…
Solid state LADAR with 8km range and spectroscopic chemical analysis capabilities have been around for decades (mostly CO2 and Nitrate concentration along with 3D point cloud data etc.)
However, the chances anyone will see that technology in a consumer product is very low. These were also never cost effective, and priced several times more than most cars. Additionally, like all optics these couldn't handle excessive dust, rain, direct sunlight, and bug guts.
Most platforms included millimeter Radar for when vision and LIDAR/LADAR optics fail. QNX simply missed its largest market launch window in the 1990s, and is no longer the path forward for a lot of projects. Note "AI" might be real someday (unlikely an LLM), but every hype-cycle needs to run its course. =3
Re: Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors
#5I was expecting flash LIDAR and MEMS mirror systems to dominate self-driving cars by now, but rotating machinery is still dominant in the US. The trend in China and Japan is a long-range forward-facing LIDAR coupled with three shorter-range units for side and rear coverage.[1] The long-range unit still costs around US$10,000. This should come down with volume. [1] https://www.robosense.ai/en/news-show-1908 [2] https:…
Non-scanning means your flash emits the equivalent of all the beams at the same time. Look at their flagship spec, you must master 160A next to the other electronics. Two board designs are more expensive and error prone, can't get 160 amps through a flex-cable easily. Then there is the opening angle, you need wide _and_ long, at least for front and rear facing and the optics for that are challenging. Another influenc…
Also there's the simple physics view of the same problem. The advantage of scanning is that you can focus all the laser pulse energy into one narrow beam. Non scanning means covering the whole field of view at once with that same laser pulse. Then you have a choice. Either somehow deal with the exponentially weaker return pulse (since it's spread over the whole field of view), or try to increase the pulse energy (and there you're limited by laser safety regulations)
Re: Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors
#6The first table is already outdated, there are COTS units like the STL-27L that operate on dTOF with a 25m range, return thousands of points per sweep, and fit into a package with a footprint the size of a typical wristwatch. Bulky optics are no longer a requirement, and that's even on the very low end of the price spectrum, more expensive units can do 30+ m in a similarly sized form factor.
Re: Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors
#7Very informative. I assume this is the type of industry work PhDs in physics do
Re: Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors
#8I was expecting flash LIDAR and MEMS mirror systems to dominate self-driving cars by now, but rotating machinery is still dominant in the US. The trend in China and Japan is a long-range forward-facing LIDAR coupled with three shorter-range units for side and rear coverage.[1] The long-range unit still costs around US$10,000. This should come down with volume. [1] https://www.robosense.ai/en/news-show-1908 [2] https:…
The em4 does not cost 10000 dollars. It is going to sell for well under 1000$. Hesai's low end ATX is supposed going to be less than 300$, and the AT128 already sells for 400-500$.
Re: Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors
#9I was always wondering if every car around you had a Lidar, would these systems be confused by light emitted by other cars ?
Re: Lidar, optical distance and time of flight sensors
#10Slightly offtopic, why is it so difficult to find a cheap and compact laser interferometer that can do sub-micron measurements?
This guy gets close:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUdro-6u2Zg&t=770s
But why isn't something cheap and small like this commercially available as an integrated system?