Autonomous Vehicle with 2D Lidar

Lidar is an acronym for light detection and ranging. Lidar is like radar, except that it uses light instead of radio waves. The light source is a laser. A lidar sends out light pulses and measures the time it takes for a reflection bouncing off a remote object to return to the device. As the speed of light is a known constant, the distance to the object can be calculated from the travel time of the light pulse (Figure 1).