LiDAR Technology Coming to Factory Systems

While LiDAR (light detection and ranging) systems are typically discussed in the context of the automotive industry, where the systems — which use pulses of laser light for purposes of detecting objects and ranging — are a key element to the development of autonomous vehicle capabilities, industrial sensor company Sick AG and automotive sensor company IBEO Automotive Systems GmbH have announced a collaboration through which they will develop a 3D solid-state LiDAR system for industrial application.

The IBEO system is solid-state, meaning there are no moving parts. (You may have seen autonomous test vehicles with what appear to be spinning Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets affixed to a roof rack: those are LiDAR sensors that aren’t solid-state.)

What’s more, the ibeoNext measurement core, which uses a photon laser measurement technique, is capable of accurately operating in conditions where there are shocks and vibrations, characteristic of both roads and factories.

The system provides output that includes images which resemble those of a camera (although in black and white).

The companies anticipate running tests of the industrial LiDAR system in customer plants early this year.