Can the spinning lasers on top of the Google car see my underwear? To find out the answer, I asked the inventor of the device, David Hall.
“No, it can’t see your underwear but it can tell how tall you are and exactly how far you are standing in respect to a car.”
LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) is a new way of looking at the world. With 64 spinning lasers, LIDAR images the world in a true 3D manner by measuring the distance from a stationary or moving position at a million points per second. The image is recreated by the control software in a similar way as modern video gaming operates.
As a competitor in the second DARPA Grand Challenge, David Hall came up with the idea. His first version of the LIDAR was the size of a spare tire spinning on top of his green Toyota Tundra. It was a successful design and Hall went on to make a smaller version that was used on five of the six finishing vehicles in the recent Urban Grand Challenge.
