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LiDAR News: Tetravue

December 15, 2017

IEEE Spectrum publishes an article "TetraVue Says Its Lidar Will Dominate the Robocar Business." The reason for domination is said to be the high spatial resolution - 2MP in the current Tetravue design:

“We put an optical encoder between the lens and the image sensor, and it puts a time stamp on photons as they come in, so we can extract range information,” says Hal Zarem, chief executive of TetraVue.

That optical method has the advantage of scalability, which is why TetraVue’s system boasts 2 megapixels. And because the 100-nanosecond-long flashes repeat at a rate of 30 hertz, the lidar provides 60 million bits of data per second. That’s high-definition, full motion video.

“Because you get standard video as well as lidar for each pixel, you don’t have to figure which object the photon came from—it’s inherently fused in the camera,” says Zarem.

No other lidars will be needed, he adds. Translation: Say goodbye to all the other lidar companies you’ve heard about—Velodyne, for example. As for the other sensors, well, radars will survive, as will a few cameras to fill secondary roles such as showing what’s behind the car when you back up."

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