Saturday, February 09, 2019

11 Myths about LiDARs

ElectronicDesign: Cepton CEO and co-founder Jung Pei presents 11 myths about LiDARs as a background to show the company advantages:
  1. LiDAR is a very high-tech solution.
  2. LiDAR is expensive.
  3. Solid-state LiDAR is the best approach because it has no moving parts.
  4. Flash LiDAR is the best LiDAR for imaging.
  5. LiDAR must operate infrared wavelengths.
  6. LiDAR isn’t safe for the human eye.
  7. LiDAR can’t work in poor weather conditions.
  8. LiDAR can only be used for automobiles.
  9. LiDAR won’t be incorporated into vehicles for another decade.
  10. LiDAR can be fully replaced by cameras, radar, or a combination of the two.
  11. FMCW LiDAR is better than ToF LiDAR.


  1. Most of the 11 responses are a bit lame. But the weather response was the lamest, basically saying if the weather is bad, no optical system works well. So maybe it has to be taken in that narrow context. Still, I wonder about the next generation of "drivers" that don't get much experience driving, except when the conditions are so poor that these automatic systems break down? That is beyond the scope of this article, but still a concern to me. I remain skeptical about LIDAR for several reasons.

    BTW, the radar systems for adaptive cruise control and emergency braking in two of my vehicles (Audi and Land Rover) both fail in the snow. I am not sure why, but they shut down after operating for perhaps half an hour. I am guessing snow/ice buildup, but unclear where that is. There are no instructions to clear off a particular part of the vehicle as a cure.

    1. Actually, not all LiDARs are the same with respect to bad weather. The scanning ones are worse than flash, the FMCW LiDARs degrade more than pulsed, etc. However, he can't go into these details without making Cepton look worse than some of the competitors.

    2. Hello Eric! Basically all Radar systems have that problem. The radar is usually mounted in the front grill (e.g. Behind the emblem) or even below. There snow and ice builds up even though modern radars have radom heaters to improve the situation. For drivers there is not much they can do about it. So also radars are not "weather prove"!

  2. Hitachi AFR (bottom of the webpage) can see through fog with a security camera: it's an old technique, to see through obscurants.

    Using optical phase conjugation it's possible to see through dense foliage using LiDAR:

    It's partly hardware and partly new software (firmware) that enables this.


All comments are moderated to avoid spam and personal attacks.