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Generally LIDARs work by rotating a mirror that the laser bounces off of giving you a 2D plane or cone where you can detect things. Super expensive LIDARs like
by Symmetry 11y ago
Generally LIDARs work by rotating a mirror that the laser bounces off of giving you a 2D plane or cone where you can detect things. Super expensive LIDARs like the one on the Google car use a number of cones with different angles to approximate a 3D system and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Other systems like the ones you see in the DARPA challenge might rotate the plane of the LIDAR through a full circle, but that takes a while.
Spinning mirrors are also somewhat delicate which can be a problem for automotive applications.
- Animats 11y agoExactly. That expensive rotating Velodyne thing is a research tool, not a production auto part. Production cars need better, preferably with no big moving parts. The Pioneer MEMS device qualifies (the moving parts are at IC scale). The new Kinect is a no-moving-parts 3D LIDAR. The Advanced Scientific Concepts flash LIDAR is also a good 3D LIDAR, usable outdoors in daylight. It costs about $100K because it's hand-made by physicists in Santa Barbara for DOD and Space-X, but the technology isn't inherently expensive. The Pioneer press release doesn't say much. The usual specs are X and Y pixels, field of view, and range, none of which they give.