Self driving car

OVERVIEW

Autonomous cars combine a variety of sensors to perceive their surroundings, which enable them to be driver-less.

The constant growth over the last few years of advanced assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD) solutions helped a lot in the adoption of all those sensors systems.

There are three main groups of sensor systems: LiDAR (light detection & ranging),  RADAR sensing technology and cameras.

These sensors must provide a real time picture of the 3D environment of the vehicle.

Video images provide most of the details for the human driver but are also suitable as an input parameter for highly automated driving. Rear and 360° cameras support the driver with a better representation of the environment outside the vehicle.

LIDAR systems for Autonomous driving

LIDAR – Laser-based system. Its measurements emit several thousands laser pulses per second. Pulsed laser diodes emit their beams at a few nanoseconds interval and LiDAR provides reliable information in the shortest amount of time. The distance to the obstacle can be determined by the difference in transit time between the outgoing signal and the incoming reflection, the so-called time of flight (ToF).

One of the current challenges in the automotive sector is to reach the fully automated stage of driving (level 5 of automation). LIDAR is one of the technologies that will allow the development of autonomous vehicle such as self-driving car, robot-taxis, autonomous shuttles…

From a common agreement, LIDAR systems for autonomous vehicles will not be widely used for ADAS systems until the price of these systems has fallen sufficiently to reach a level of mass production will be more easily accessible with measurement tools allowing precise and complete R&D development standardization.

Qualifying and measuring both efficiency and direction of the light emitter will allow the verification that your laser is calibrated to reach an excellent quality of data collection. It allows to check that your laser is compliant with your own pattern.

VCProbe-NIR-DSD system

ELDIM can provide the VCProbe-NIR-DSD product range to enable R&D or standardization of LIDAR system transmitters for autonomous vehicles

Our equipment characterize LIDAR and VCSEL components in near-infrared (NIR) light. We drive the optics and photonics by developing innovative solutions by Fourier optics and viewing angle measurement for light source characterization.

We can adapt our equipment to customer request such as optimized systems for autonomous driving on long range LiDAR at 1400nm.