Imaging lidar prototype with homography and deep learning ranging methods

Abstract

We report on developing a non-scanning laser-based imaging lidar system based on a diffractive optical element with potential applications in advanced driver assistance systems, autonomous vehicles, drone navigation, and mobile devices. Our proposed lidar utilizes image processing, homography, and deep learning. Our emphasis in the design approach is on the compactness and cost of the final system for it to be deployable both as standalone and complementary to existing lidar sensors, enabling fusion sensing in the applications. This work describes the basic elements of the proposed lidar system and presents two potential ranging mechanisms, along with their experimental results demonstrating the real-time performance of our first prototype.