A milestone for laser sensors in self-driving cars – OSRAM Group Website

LIDAR sensors are an essential element in future fully autonomous or semi-autonomous self-driving cars. The system operates on the principle of time-of-flight measurement. A very short laser pulse is transmitted, hits an object, is reflected and detected by a sensor. From the time-of-flight of the laser beam it is possible to calculate the distance to the object. Scanning LIDAR systems scan the surroundings of the car horizontally with a laser beam across a certain angular segment and produce a high-resolution 3D map of the environment.