LiDAR for Ground and Air Bots...

Patrick Coleman

Hello,

I have questions as a sensor maker for those of you who'd like to participate.

First, have many parallax users been cooking up there own multirotors? I see the official one is only nearing release.
( I have my own scratch built tricopter )

Second, have many (or any) started using the XV-11 LiDAR or similar on air or ground bots?

Third, has anyone in the parallax social circles demonstrated a flying robot with collision avoidance ability?

The reason I ask is that I have a currently running KickStarter, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/215756405/low-cost-open-source-lidar-for-robotic-systems
and I thought I had the project finalized with I2C and SPI, but may add additional features, like USART or PWM out.

-Thank You
Patrick

prof_braino

I backerd the LIDAR-lite kickstarter for $50, still waiting for a unit.

https://store.3drobotics.com/products/lidar-lite

I helped with the documentation on the SF02/f, which is the guts of a prop surveyor's laser distance measurement unit. The SF02/f cost $350, and is rock solid in direct sunlight. The same laser, circuits and detector are used in the 350 meter models, the only difference is much bigger lenses. The SF02/f and its cousins are expesive, but flawless. They use a 14 watt lases with pulses that are only several nano seconds so the equivalent continuous power is on .0008 watts (0.8 milliwatt) and with the lensing is eye-safe.

http://www.parallax.com/product/28043

The key is getting very sharp edges on the pulses. You have to meet or beat $72 to match LIDAR-lite.

But we still don't know if these sub $350 units will work. The physics doesn't look good for non-laser LED or Lens-less designs. An avalanche photo diode in the detector seems mandatory.

Patrick Coleman

Yeah, I was surprised when I saw the xv-11 lidar uses just a panavision dlis-2k linear pixel sensor, like a scanner. That got me thinking low cost lidar might work. The problem with all current lidars' seems to be cost, as with the Hykoyu's.

erco

For $399, I'm about to pull the trigger on an RPLIDAR. http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/156627-400-360-Degree-Laser-Scanner

Patrick Coleman

erco wrote: »

For $399, I'm about to pull the trigger on an RPLIDAR. http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/156627-400-360-Degree-Laser-Scanner

If you do snag one of the robopeak ones, post here and tell the rest of us. From others, I was told it's supposed to be a XV-11 lidar knockoff. But I don't know if the robopeak device uses the panavision dlis-2k sensor.

400 $ really limits the applications we can put the lidar in, and the otherwise cheap and cool ideas others could use it for.