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AssigneeThe Charles Stark Draper Laboratories, Inc.
InventorsChristopher Bessette, Steven J. Byrnes, Michael G. Moebius, Scott Evan Lennox, Steven J. Spector
Estimating the term…
A LIDAR system includes an array of optical emitters, an objective lens optically coupling each optical emitter to a respective unique portion of a field of view, an optical switching network coupled between a laser and the array of optical emitters and a controller coupled to the optical switching network and configured to cause the optical switching network to route light from the laser to a sequence of the optical emitters according to a dynamically varying temporal pattern and to vary the temporal pattern based at least in part on distance to an object within the field of view. The LiDAR system scans different portions of the field of view differently, such as with different laser power levels, different revisit rates and/or different scan patterns, for example based on likelihood of detecting objects of interest in the various portions or based on likely relative importance of objects likely to be found in the various portions.
-6. (canceled)
A control system for an array of optical emitters, configured to:
The control system of claim 1, configured to change the duration for the corresponding optical emitter responsive to the determination of the distance.
The control system of claim 1, configured to change the order of interrogation for the array of optical emitters responsive to the determination of the distance.
The control system of claim 1, wherein the control system is coupled to a laser configured to produce the light.
The control system of claim 3, wherein to update the temporal pattern, the control system is configured to change a power level of the laser.
The control system of claim 1, wherein to update the temporal pattern, the control system is configured to change a revisit rate.
The control system of claim 1, wherein to update the temporal pattern, the control system is configured to change a dwell time per portion for one or more optical emitters.
The control system of claim 1, configured to scan a first subset of the portions more frequently than a second subset based on the updated temporal pattern.
The control system of claim 1, wherein an objective lens couples the light to the array of optical emitters.
The control system of claim 1, wherein the temporal pattern comprises a first time period between two consecutive pulses of the light from the corresponding optical emitter.
The control system of claim 1, wherein the temporal pattern comprises a second time period between an actuation of a first light emitter and an actuation of a second light emitter.
The control system of claim 1, wherein each portion of the one or more portions of the field of view corresponds to at least one optical emitter of the array of optical emitters.
A method for controlling an array of optical emitters, comprising:
A LiDAR system comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.