Lidar Mapping

[Simon Ritchie]

Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR  or just lidar) uses a laser beam to scan a surface and give distance information.  This can be used to produce maps and also to help robots and autonomous vehicles to find their way around.

The simplest example of a Lidar device is a laser tape measure.  This just gives an accurate reading of distance to wherever it's pointing. More sophisticated devices use mirrors or a moving platform to make the laser scan along a line.  The more expensive models have many lasers mounted at different angles to sweap across a whole area in one scan.

Initially, Lidar was only used to produce maps, so the market was fairly small - in the UK pretty much the Ordnance Survey, the Environment Agency and a few large construction companies.  That made the equipment specialist and expensive.  Now Lidar units are being developed to control robots and driverless cars.  This creates a much bigger market, and brings the prices down.

One major development which is happening right now (Mid 2018) is lider-on-a-chip.  Microchips that incorporate a laser device and a receiver have been developed and are just beginning to become available.  They are smaller and cheaper than the conventional devices and they consume less power.  They were developed for driverless car navigation and collision avoidance rather than geographical mapping, but it may be possible to re-purpose them and thereby slash the costs of mapping systems.