Tiny lidar sensor developed by DARPA and MIT - Applications for driverless cars and robotics

08/05/2016 - 14:02

Christopher V. Poulton and Michael R. Watts


Light detection and ranging, or lidar, is a sensing technology based on laser light. It’s similar to radar, but can have a higher resolution, since the wavelength of light is about 100,000 times smaller than radio wavelengths. For robots, this is very important: Since radar cannot accurately image small features, a robot equipped with only a radar module would have a hard time grasping a complex object.

At the moment, primary applications of lidar are autonomous vehicles and robotics, but also include terrain and ocean mapping and UAVs.

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