It's a point cloud, but you get stripes because of the way the systems scan. Unless you're using a flash LIDAR (mucho dinero), all LIDAR are single point senso

It's a point cloud, but you get stripes because of the way the systems scan. Unless you're using a flash LIDAR (mucho dinero), all LIDAR are single point sensors which have to be scanned. That is, you send out a pulse of light and a single photodiode detects the return signal. A Velodyne LIDAR has up to 64 rx/tx pairs arranged into a grid which is rotated rapidly, so you end up imaging a series of rings around the sensor. Specs - the best LIDAR systems scan at around 1Mpt/second over a full hemisphere. The Velodyne system gives you around 20-30k measurements in the field of view a typical car camera. Accuracy is centimeter level. Stripes are produced by laser triangulation systems, but they're not true LIDAR. You project a line and look at how the image of it shifts compared to a known distance.