Low-Cost LIDAR Design for Autonomous Systems

A LiDAR system for autonomous vehicles uses two sensors, one to measure the peak reflection intensity and another with a configurable trigger threshold to measure the time when the peak occurred. This allows accurate reflection intensity and time detection without an expensive high-speed ADC. The LiDAR uses a laser and sensors to measure the reflection peak from objects around the vehicle.

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Generating high-resolution 3D point clouds from low-resolution LiDAR point clouds and camera images to enable autonomous vehicles to operate with lower-cost sensors. The system uses machine learning to combine a downsampled LiDAR point cloud with camera images to generate a higher-resolution depth map.

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A ranging method for LIDAR systems that allows higher frame rates and reduces cost compared to conventional LIDAR systems. The method involves circularly allocating the transmit signal to each light channel in a chronological order. This allows sequential ranging without needing multiple detectors per channel. The sequential allocation ensures that reflected signals from adjacent points can be distinguished by timing rather than using separate detectors. This allows higher frame rates and reduces the number of detectors needed compared to conventional LIDAR systems.

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A low-cost, integrated lidar system using a 1550nm laser and a rotating mirror for scanning instead of a galvanometer. The system simplifies the lidar design by eliminating the galvanometer and using a rotating mirror for scanning. It also uses a frequency multiplier to reduce the wavelength of the reflected signal to match the sensitivity of lower-cost silicon detectors. The simplified design allows low-cost, integrated lidar with a longer detection range compared to 905nm lidar.

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Automotive lidar system using phase-encoded laser bursts and optimized receiver architecture to improve performance and reduce cost compared to single pulse lidar. The lidar transmits a phase-locked burst of multiple laser pulses instead of a single pulse. The phase encoding is chosen to maximize autocorrelation slew rate. This allows lower peak laser power, making the system eye-safe. The receiver uses a current domain front end with oversampled ADC and cross-correlation to determine time of flight. A parallel path measures intensity. Randomly selecting phase codes from a pool reduces interference.

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A LiDAR system that uses a pulsed time-of-flight (TOF) laser range-finding technique for measuring distances to objects. The LiDAR system has features to optimize cost while maintaining long-range, high resolution, and reliability. The features include collimated laser beams, averaging of multiple laser pulses, and motion synchronization to avoid temporal averaging. The LiDAR system uses arrays of solid-state lasers and detectors for compactness, reliability, and low cost.

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LiDAR systems for autonomous vehicles use multiple wavelengths of light to improve performance and reduce size, cost, and complexity compared to single-wavelength LiDARs. The multi-wavelength LiDARs use lasers with different colors to enable higher-resolution 3D mapping without moving parts. The LiDAR sensors have modular designs that allow flexibility for different vehicle types. The sensors also have optical monitoring to ensure the lasers are operating correctly and detect interference.

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Efficiently sharing hardware resources like ADCs in lidar systems using time multiplexing and seeding multiple transmitters with one optical signal. The lidar system alternates turning on a main device with a laser and a transceiver to transmit/receive lidar signals. This allows sharing the ADCs between the devices. The main device generates an optical signal associated with a local oscillator. The transceiver transmits it, receives reflected signals, and pairs them with the local oscillator to get electrical signals. The ADCs are shared by multiplexing multiple sets of transceivers. The main device can also seed multiple transmitters with one optical signal.

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A cost-reduced lidar device that enables high-precision distance measurement without reducing maximum range compared to mechanical scanning lidars. The lidar uses non-mechanical scanning of point light to irradiate objects. It captures images of the scanned areas using an imaging optical element. The device measures distances using a sensor with a light-receiving part. For each scanned point, it selectively activates a region in the sensor corresponding to the scanned area. This allows capturing objects using the imaging element while simultaneously measuring distances using the activated regions. It avoids the low light-gathering efficiency of small, opposite-facing sensors used in non-mechanical scanning devices.

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Lidar ranging system and method that reduces cost by using an optical switch to control when the photosensor receives reflected pulses. The system emits laser pulses and receives reflections using an area array sensor. An optical switch allows selective reception of pulses reflected at different phases. By measuring the intensity of pulses received at specific phases, the distance to the target can be determined. This avoids needing high-performance photosensors for all reflections. The switch controls the exposure window of the sensor to receive reflections at desired phases.

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LiDAR system with a 2D array of VCSEL lasers that can be individually addressed for LiDAR applications like autonomous vehicles. The LiDAR system simultaneously controls the lasers in the array to emit independent laser pulses to avoid crosstalk while minimizing the number of electrical drivers needed. The laser array is driven in a matrix-addressable manner by row/column to individually energize each VCSEL with a low voltage below its breakdown voltage. This allows 2D control of the laser array with a limited number of drivers.

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A compact, low-cost rotating LiDAR system for autonomous vehicles that provides high positional accuracy, long-distance range, and low power consumption. The system has a stationary base with a rotating upper assembly that contains the LiDAR sensor. The rotation is achieved using a minimal contact, brushless electromagnetic motor. The rotating assembly communicates with the base wirelessly using optical and RF links. This eliminates the need for slip rings and allows compact integration. The wireless rotation and communication enable a simpler, lower-cost design compared to traditional rotating LiDAR systems.

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Compact and robust lidar system using coaxial beams for improved range and resolution compared to traditional lidar. The system uses a segmented lens with separate transmit and receive segments. This allows collimating the transmit beam and focusing the receive beam without requiring a complex coaxial scanner. The segmented lens segments can be moved independently to compensate for mechanical impacts. This simplifies the lidar design, reducing size and cost compared to coaxial scanners.

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Distance measuring unit for autonomous vehicles that uses a single optical path for both emitting and receiving laser pulses. The unit has an emitter and a receiver coupled together through the same optical component. This allows using the same optics for both emission and reception, simplifying the design and reducing cost compared to separate emitters and receivers. The emitter reflects the laser pulses off a reflector before passing through the shared optics, so they can be received by the receiver using the same path.

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LiDAR system with non-uniform vertical distribution of laser beams. The LiDAR rotor has multiple lasers that emit beams at different vertical angles. This concentrates the beams near the horizontal for better ground detection while using fewer lines. An optical splitter and rotating mirror scan the beams. The non-uniform distribution of vertically angled lasers helps optimize beam density for ground-level targets, like pedestrians and vehicles while reducing unnecessary vertical coverage.

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FPGA-based distance measurement system using lidar and optical sensing for high accuracy and low cost compared to high speed ADCs. The system converts analog pulse signals representing optical reflections into digital values using FPGA comparators. The FPGA samples the digital values with shorter resolution than the clock period to extract timing information. This allows precise digitization and timing resolution without expensive high speed ADCs. The FPGA calibrates the comparators for offset compensation. The technique is particularly useful for moving objects like drones needing centimeter-accurate distance measurements in complex environments.

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A compact and efficient light detection and ranging (LIDAR) device for scanning in omnidirections without requiring multiple light sources or complex phased array components. The device has a rotating diverging mirror to spread the emitted light beam in all directions. A fixed converging element collects the reflected light and focuses it on a detector. By rotating the diverging mirror, the device can scan the beam in omnidirectional patterns without needing mechanical scanning of the light source or phased array. This simplifies the LIDAR system and reduces size and cost compared to traditional scanning approaches.

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Generating high-density 3D maps of a scene using low-density distance sensors and high-density image sensors. By fusing passive and active measurements from cameras, LiDAR, radar, etc., the method analyzes the 3D map and images to identify stationary vs moving objects. It then uses active distance measurements only on moving objects to estimate distances to stationary objects. This allows the generation of high-density 3D maps from low-density sensors, improving resolution, coverage, and cost over using just LiDAR alone.

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Localization for autonomous vehicles using monocular cameras instead of expensive LiDAR scanners. The system compares camera images to a 3D map to find the vehicle's location. Synthetic camera views are generated and matched to maximize mutual information. The camera-based localization achieves similar accuracy to LiDAR-based methods at a much lower cost.

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LiDAR sensor for autonomous vehicles that uses multiple low-cost VCSEL laser arrays and detectors instead of a single laser/mirror assembly. The VCSEL arrays are directed by lenses to cover the desired field of view. The laser beams are scanned by turning on/off individual lasers in each array. This creates a 3D point cloud of reflections from the detectors.

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