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by Animats 3350 days ago
Not much info here from Velodyne. What's the range? Is this a flash or MEMS device? Resolution?

Advanced Scientific Concepts has had good flash LIDAR units for sale for years. They just cost too much. They sold them to DoD and Space-X. Continental, the German auto parts maker (a very big company, not a startup) has purchased the ASC technology and expects to ship in volume in 2020. Here's a Continental prototype mounted on a Mercedes.[1] This is mounted at bumper height and has a 120 degree field of view, and has only 30m range. So this is for city driving or slow driving in tight spots.

Continental says they intend to ship in volume in 2020. Nobody is yet interested in ordering enough units in the kind of volume a major auto parts manufacturer needs.

Google uses a high-mounted LIDAR with longer range as well as the bumper height sensors. This doesn't address that market.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxqFX94zBPI
2 comments
analognoise 3350 days ago
We shipped one on the OSIRIS-Rex program to gather materials from an asteroid last year, and will be on the new Boeing crewed capsule as well!

Yeah I'm not impressed with Velodyne's lidars either. The work at Continental is going, quietly, to volume production.

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moondistance 3350 days ago
From the image at the top of the article: "up to 200m range" and "35 degree vertical field of view".
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Animats 3350 days ago
In the video, the Continental rep says "120 degree field of view" and "reaching out as far as thirty meters".[1] This may be the short range model for bumper height applications. ASC has built units with much longer ranges.

For more range, you need bigger collecting optics, which means a bigger unit, or a narrower field of view. The tradeoffs are straightforward.

You also have to spread the laser output over a wider area to keep it eye-safe. The laser eye-safety requirement is on power through a 1/4" hole, corresponding to the pupil size of an eye. This protects people staring directly into the emitter. The power can be greater if the beam is wider. If you devoted the top inch of the windshield to sensors, and spread the laser output over a wide area of windshield, the power could be much higher.

[1] https://youtu.be/pxqFX94zBPI?t=139

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