Prospects for using gated lidars in autonomous mobile robots

Valeriy L. Alexeev
Russian State Scientific Center for Robotics and Technical Cybernetics (RTC), Leading Engineer, 21, Tikhoretsky pr., Saint Petersburg, 194064, Russia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Dmitry A. Goryachkin
RTC, Senior Research Scientist, 21, Tikhoretsky pr., Saint Petersburg, 194064, Russia, tel.: +7(921)924-29-38, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Nikolay A. Gryaznov
PhD in Physics and Mathematics, RTC, 21, Tikhoretsky pr., Saint Petersburg, 194064, Russia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Viktor I. Kuprenyuk
PhD in Physics and Mathematics, RTC, Leading Research Scientist, 21, Tikhoretsky pr., Saint Petersburg, 194064, Russia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Evgeniy N. Sosnov
RTC, Senior Research Scientist, 21, Tikhoretsky pr., Saint Petersburg, 194064, Russia, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received 17 November 2020

Abstract
The analysis of the implementation problems of technical vision systems based on the use of time-of-flight laser lidars is carried out. It is concluded that the implementation of vision systems with acceptable parameters dictates an excessively high cost of the lidar. An alternative version of the lidar implementation is considered – a gated lidar based on a laser vision system. Replacing the broadband detector and high-speed scanning system with a gated CCD-matrix can significantly reduce the cost of the lidar while ensuring the high resolution of the lidar. The analysis of the dependence of the signal-to-noise ratio for gated lidar with and without an electron-optical converter has shown that in bad weather conditions the decrease in the gain of the useful signal when the image intensifier is excluded is compensated by the exclusion of the EOC's noise factor, so that the loss in the observation distance is less than 15%.

Key words
Laser ranging, technical vision, robotics, time-of-flight lidar, gated lidar, strobe lidar, laser vision system, 3D image, gated matrix, signal-to-noise ratio.

Acknowledgements
This work was performed with financial support of Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation in the frame of State assignment number 075-01195-20-01.

DOI
https://doi.org/10.31776/RTCJ.9208

Bibliographic description
Alexeev, V. et al., 2021. Prospects for using gated lidars in autonomous mobile robots. Robotics and Technical Cybernetics, 9(2), pp.133-141.

UDC identifier:
004.93'1:007.52

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