The Camera IS The Lidar

It was clear when Ouster started developing the OS-1 three years ago that deep learning research for cameras was outpacing lidar research. Lidar data has incredible benefits -- rich spatial information and lighting agnostic sensing to name a couple -- but it lacks the raw resolution and efficient array structure of camera images, and 3D point clouds are still more difficult to encode in a neural net or process with hardware acceleration. With the tradeoffs between both sensing modalities in mind, we set out to bring the best aspects of lidars and cameras together in a single device from the very beginning. Today we're releasing a firmware upgrade and update to our open source driver that deliver on that goal. Our OS-1 lidar now outputs fixed resolution depth images, signal images, and ambient images in real time, all without a camera.