3 ms·

No they don't. Flash LIDAR suffers from too little range, if you have an angular resolution for the LIDAR of say 0.01 degrees, you're looking at 36 million poin

No they don't. Flash LIDAR suffers from too little range, if you have an angular resolution for the LIDAR of say 0.01 degrees, you're looking at 36 million points! This means that you need 36 million times as much energy to match the same SNR as normal LIDAR. Even with 1550nm light and single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs), this is clearly infeasible. Even Princeton Lightwave (now bought by Ford/Argo), arguably the fathers of modern 1550nm/SPADs flash LIDAR have moved away to a hybrid configuration for autonomous vehicles.

Animats 8y ago
128x128 is as far as ASC got. There's a tradeoff between range and beam width for flash LIDAR. The idea is to get the price down, so you can have multiple wide-angle short range ones around the perimeter of the vehicle, and a narrow beam long range one pointed ahead.
- deepnotderp 8y ago
  The brutal thing about flash is that it doesn't matter how many pixels you collect, it's still going to spread out over the whole thing. Multipoint flash like Ouster is better in this respect.
  - Animats 8y ago
    The output side can be spread out to allow for higher laser power. The safety issue is how much energy goes through a hole about 0.25" in diameter, the size of the human eye, at the closest you can get to the emitter. If you spread out the outgoing beam, this is less of a problem. Ouster is interesting. But it's not a no moving parts system. It rotates. It's like Velodyne's spinners, but with more integration of the lasers and sensors onto single ICs.
    - deepnotderp 8y ago
      Still not eye safe enough, but also getting a 36 million times laser isn't cheap :) Ouster probably has the best potential path to full solid state with multipointflash lidar.
wbl 8y ago
You can make a SPAD array? I've had some ideas that need that. Say more?
- deepnotderp 8y ago
  I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but if you Google "SPAD array" you'll find plenty of results. I'm sure ouster will be willing to sell you one also

Animats 8y ago

128x128 is as far as ASC got. There's a tradeoff between range and beam width for flash LIDAR. The idea is to get the price down, so you can have multiple wide-angle short range ones around the perimeter of the vehicle, and a narrow beam long range one pointed ahead.

deepnotderp 8y ago
The brutal thing about flash is that it doesn't matter how many pixels you collect, it's still going to spread out over the whole thing. Multipoint flash like Ouster is better in this respect.
- Animats 8y ago
  The output side can be spread out to allow for higher laser power. The safety issue is how much energy goes through a hole about 0.25" in diameter, the size of the human eye, at the closest you can get to the emitter. If you spread out the outgoing beam, this is less of a problem. Ouster is interesting. But it's not a no moving parts system. It rotates. It's like Velodyne's spinners, but with more integration of the lasers and sensors onto single ICs.
  - deepnotderp 8y ago
    Still not eye safe enough, but also getting a 36 million times laser isn't cheap :) Ouster probably has the best potential path to full solid state with multipointflash lidar.

wbl 8y ago

You can make a SPAD array? I've had some ideas that need that. Say more?

deepnotderp 8y ago
I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but if you Google "SPAD array" you'll find plenty of results. I'm sure ouster will be willing to sell you one also