Lidar system
AssigneeLeica Geosystems AG
InventorsGregory C. Walsh, Alan Aindow
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Methods and systems for using spectrally separated light pulses to collect more LIDAR information are presented. In one embodiment, a monochromatic pulse is transmitted to collect range information and a white pulse is transmitted a short time afterwards to collect spectral responsivity information or color of the target. In another embodiment, the white light pulse is used to collect both range and spectral responsivity information of the target. In another embodiment, the spectral separated laser is spatially spread in order to collect range information over more than one point at a time.
Claims9
A method of obtaining location information regarding an object, the method comprising:
- generating a laser pulse;
- dividing the laser pulse into a plurality of wavelength separated laser pulse portions;
- simultaneously directing each of the wavelength separated laser pulse portions to the object at a different angular direction and detecting a corresponding plurality of reflected wavelength separated laser pulse portions;
- and
- resolving the plurality of reflected wavelength separated laser pulse portions to generate location information regarding the object.
A system for generating both location and spectral information for a plurality of points on an object, the system comprising:
- a laser that emits pulses of light;
- means for splitting each pulse of light into a plurality of pulse components of a respective plurality of wavelengths;
- means for detecting the plurality of pulse components;
- and
- means for resolving the plurality of pulse components that are associated with a single point on the object, wherein the means for resolving corresponds the pulse components to each other based upon a known time delay for each pulse component.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.