Thousands of points, one picture of the terrain.

A concept for using lidar in the military. Scans from successive positions merge into one point cloud, and algorithms find objects in it on their own. Lidar sees the shape of its surroundings whatever the light, at night too.

Stage
Advanced algorithm tests
Type
Research project
For
Defence
The new algorithms: point clouds from many scans merged into one picture of a street.

Where it stands

Advanced tests are under way of algorithms that merge point clouds from successive scans into one coherent picture and detect objects in it. Before that, I tested how much of the surroundings can be rebuilt from a phone camera’s image alone, with DA3, a model that estimates depth from a single photo.

Vision

The goal is a system that builds an accurate map of the terrain from a few positions or a single drive, and marks by itself what is on it and what has changed since the last scan.

Lidar measures distance with its own light, so it works after dark and where a camera sees little. Together with automatic object detection it gives a quick, clear picture of the situation.