Prospects for using gated lidars in autonomous mobile robots

Abstract

The analysis of the implementation problems of technical vision systems based on the use of time-of-flight laser lidars is carried out. It is concluded that the implementation of vision systems with acceptable parameters dictates an excessively high cost of the lidar. An alternative version of the lidar implementation is considered – a gated lidar based on a laser vision system. Replacing the broadband detector and high-speed scanning system with a gated CCD-matrix can significantly reduce the cost of the lidar while ensuring the high resolution of the lidar. The analysis of the dependence of the signal-to-noise ratio for gated lidar with and without an electron-optical converter has shown that in bad weather conditions the decrease in the gain of the useful signal when the image intensifier is excluded is compensated by the exclusion of the EOC's noise factor, so that the loss in the observation distance is less than 15%.