Light modulating lidar system

A LIDAR system comprising:

• a laser projecting a first beam of laser light upon a spatial light modulator (SLM) being a liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) device configured to modulate the first beam to project a second beam having a pattern of points of relatively high intensity separated from one another by regions of relatively low intensity;
• a first camera having a first field of view and generating an image signal of the pattern of points of the second beam overlaid upon an image (visual/IR/low-light, e.g. “night vision”) of one or more objects within the first field of view;
• a controller including an image processing module in communication with the first camera to receive the image signal therefrom and to detect the position and distance of the one or more objects using the image signal;
• and
• wherein the image processing module uses a location of one or more of the points of relatively high intensity and amplitude thereof relative to adjacent regions within the image signal in detecting the position and distance of the one or more objects.

A method for operating a LIDAR system comprising:

• projecting a first beam of laser light upon a spatial light modulator (SLM) by a laser;
• modulating the first beam by the spatial light modulator to project a second beam having a pattern of points of varying intensity;
• observing, by a first camera having a first field of view, an actual image including the pattern of the second beam overlaid upon an image of one or more objects;
• generating an image signal by the first camera representing the actual image;
• communicating the image signal from the first camera to the image processing module;
• detecting a position and distance of the one or more objects by the image processing module by comparing the pattern of points with the actual image.