Does anyone know of any examples of a "solid state" lidar as mentioned in the article? Im unable to visualise how such a thing would actually work, and its got me excited!
I am also thinking about a 3d camera. Maybe those are getting good enought to measure distance.
And, since the vehicle is moving (most of the time) anyway, maybe multiple returns can be integrated something like a synthetic aperture radar system to form a more complete picture.
Based on the ToF principle, the cameras employ an integrated light source. The emitted light is reflected by objects in the scene and travels back to the camera, where the precise time of arrival is measured independently by each pixel of the image sensor, producing a per-pixel distance measurement.