Hyper temporal lidar with controllable detection intervals based on regions of interest

A method for controlling a lidar receiver, wherein the lidar receiver comprises a photodetector, the photodetector comprising an array of pixels for sensing incident light, the method comprising:

• processing a shot list, the shot list comprising data that defines a plurality of laser pulse shots that target a plurality of range points in a field of view;
• scanning a mirror;
• transmitting the laser pulse shots one at a time toward the targeted range points via the scanning mirror;
• determining a plurality of detection intervals based on the processed shot list and defined criteria, wherein each detection interval is associated with a corresponding laser pulse shot and defines a time period for detecting a return from its associated corresponding laser pulse shot based on sensed incident light by the array, and wherein the defined criteria comprises criteria data that associates a plurality of different defined regions in the field of view with a plurality of different detection intervals, wherein the different detection intervals exhibit different durations;
• selectively starting and stopping collections of sensed incident light from pixels of the array in accordance with the determined detection intervals to control the photodetector to detect the returns from the laser pulse shots;
• digitizing sensed signals from the photodetector into a plurality of samples;
• storing the samples in a buffer;
• reading samples out of the buffer in groups corresponding to the detection intervals;
• processing the groups of samples to determine whether any of the groups of samples include returns from the corresponding laser pulse shots for their corresponding detection intervals;
• and
• computing return data for the determined returns.

An article of manufacture for controlling a lidar receiver, wherein the lidar receiver comprises a photodetector, the photodetector comprising an array of pixels for sensing incident light, the article of manufacture comprising:

• machine-readable code that is resident on a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium, wherein the code defines processing operations to be performed by a processor to cause the processor to:
• process a shot list, the shot list comprising data that defines a plurality of laser pulse shots that target a plurality of range points in a field of view;
• control scanning of a mirror;
• control transmissions of the laser pulse shots one at a time toward the targeted range points via the scanning mirror;
• determine a plurality of detection intervals based on the processed shot list and defined criteria, wherein each detection interval is associated with a corresponding laser pulse shot and defines a time period for detecting a return from its associated corresponding laser pulse shot based on sensed incident light by the array, and wherein the defined criteria comprises criteria data that associates a plurality of different defined regions in the field of view with a plurality of different detection intervals, wherein the different detection intervals exhibit different durations;
• selectively start and stop collections of sensed incident light from pixels of the array in accordance with the determined detection intervals to control the photodetector to detect the returns from the laser pulse shots;
• digitize sensed signals from the photodetector into a plurality of samples;
• store the samples in a buffer;
• read samples out of the buffer in groups corresponding to the detection intervals;
• process the groups of samples to determine whether any of the groups of samples include returns from the corresponding laser pulse shots for their corresponding detection intervals;
• and
• compute return data for the determined returns.